Pro Rege: Living under Christ’s Kingship, Volume 1

by Abraham Kuyper

Publishers:

Lexham Press; Acton Institute

, 2016

Living under Christ’s Kingship

How do Christians bridge the divide between our lives inside and outside the church?

Abraham Kuyper believed that a healthy view of Jesus' kingship was essential to closing that gap. In Pro Rege, Kuyper shows how the kingship of Christ affects all areas of life, building upon the work he began in Common Grace. In this first volume, Kuyper examines how the kingdom of Satan opposes, undermines, and obscures the kingship of Christ. He follows this by laying out the Scriptural foundation for the kingship of Christ and beginning to uncover its implications for all of creation.

Praise for Pro Rege

As we gain access to a growing volume of the writings of Abraham Kuyper in English translation we are ever more able to consider his life and work as an intriguing case study in discipleship. In Pro Rege we see Kuyper trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus in his place and time: the Netherlands of the late 19th and early 20th century. In retrospect some of his moves seem obviously misguided, others startlingly prescient. For me Kuyper's reflections raise one big question, and it is a question of practice: What does it mean to follow Jesus here, now?

—Gideon Strauss, Associate professor of worldview studies, Institute for Christian Studies; senior fellow, The Center for Public Justice

This English translation of the first volume of Kuyper's Pro Rege unveils for us his mature thinking on the multiple dimensions of Christ's reign in the face of gifts and challenges of the modern world. This first volume creates great anticipation for the publication of the remaining translations and offers the church an insightful and challenging series of reflections that have relevance far beyond Kuyper's day.

—Vincent Bacote, Associate professor of theology and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics, Wheaton College

In the early years of the 21st century, full as they are of pluralization, secularization, and globalization, we feel certain that a biblically-born faith has never been more difficult to work out in the public life of the world. While our moment in history has its complex, even immense challenges, the great gift of Kuyper’s magisterial work is the profound way that he took on these same questions in his time and place. With historical and sociological insight, with psychological and philosophical attentiveness, reading the world as he read the Word, he set forth an exhaustively-imagined account of the sovereignty of God over all things in heaven and on earth. Theologically rich, biblically grounded, Kuyper was passionately committed to helping ordinary people in ordinary places understand the meaning of their faith for life, always speaking to “the real world in which most people live their daily lives.” Pro Rege is a masterpiece, and my hope is that people all over the world will become his students, entering into his wisdom about the perennial challenge of understanding the world and our place in it.

—Steven Garber, Principal, The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture

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

“But confessing, not-denying, and even recognizing and pleading for something, is altogether different from taking it up into the very existence of your soul and living out of it.” (Pages 27–28)

“Ultimately, it was as if Christ only had to do with the church, and that they did not have to take the importance of Christ into account outside the church.” (Page xxxiii)

“The church is Christ’s vehicle for overcoming the nationalisms introduced after Babel; it should not become captive and subservient to them.” (Page xviii)

“For Kuyper, establishing a Christian nation is an eschatological event. Only the return of Christ the king will bring about Christendom—and, in so doing, abolish the sinful divisions among the nations.” (Page xxviii)

“According to Kuyper, Jesus worked wonders not through his divine nature, but through his uncorrupted human nature.” (Page xix)

• Editors’ Introduction by John Kok and Nelson D. Kloosterman
• Volume Introduction by Clifford Anderson
• Series I: The Darkening of Christ’s Kingship
  • Christ and Muhammad
  • Darkening among Christian Nations
  • Darkening in the Church
  • The General Apostasy
  • Humanity Is Great
  • The Religious Sense Diminished
  • Distracted Thinking
  • The Great World Cities
  • The Queen of the World
  • The Power of Money
  • The Dominion of Art
• Series II: The Undermining of Christ’s Kingship
  • By the Grace of God
  • Humanity’s Dominion over Nature
  • Paradise No Longer
  • Miracles
  • The Miracles of Christ
  • The Power Given to Us
  • The Increase in Our Power
  • More Shrewd in Dealing with Their Own Generation
  • The World of the Spirits
  • The Influence of the Spirit World
  • Christ and Satan
  • The Wisdom of the World
  • Science in Christian Countries
  • Universalism
  • Spiritual Unity
  • The Course of the Centuries

• Series III: The Kingship of Christ according to Scripture
  • The Notion of King
  • Dominion
  • Derived Authority
  • No Spiritualization
  • Universally Human
  • The Second Adam
  • Both Head and King
  • The Curse on Capernaum
  • The Spirit Subjected to Him
  • King as Mediator
  • The Messiah
  • King of Israel
  • John the Baptist
  • Triumph of the Higher Order
  • Connection with Life
  • A Temporary Situation
  • The Existing Order Maintained
  • The Salvation of the World
  • Preparation, Establishment, Development, and Consummation
  • The Return of the King
  • The Revelation on Patmos
  • The Two Kingdoms
  • Mystical and Instrumental
  • The Übermensch
  • Knowledge and Authority
  • Divine Capacity
  • The Holy Spirit
  • Summary

Product Details

• Title: Pro Rege: Living under Christ’s Kingship: Volume 1
• Author: Abraham Kuyper
• Translator: Albert Gootjes
• Volume Editors: John Kok & Nelson D. Kloosterman
• Series Editors: Melvin Flikkema & Jordan J. Ballor
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 432
• Format: Logos Digital, Hardcover
• Trim Size: 7x10
• ISBN: 9781577996545

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.