Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 2

by Abraham Kuyper

Publishers:

Lexham Press; Acton Institute

, 2019

God’s Gifts for a Fallen World

Common Grace is often considered Abraham Kuyper’s crowning work, an exploration of how God expresses grace even to the unsaved. Kuyper firmly believed that though many people in the world will remain unconverted, God’s grace is still shown to the world as a whole. The second volume of Common Grace contains Kuyper’s doctrinal exploration of the impact and implications of this aspect of Reformed theology.

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

“Common grace touches on the relationship between nature and grace or, if you will (for this amounts to the same thing), the relationship between church and world, between theology and secular scholarship, between our old man and our new man—or also, if we may express it thus, between our self and Christ, between our self and us ourselves.” (Page 214)

“Particular grace is personal, and common grace is general” (Page 153)

“(1) agnosticism, (2) hypothesis, or (3) revelation” (Page 3)

Contents

• Editors’ Introduction
• Volume Introduction by Craig G. Bartholomew
• The Purpose of this Doctrinal Inquiry
• The Problem to Be Solved
• The Solution according to Unbelievers
• Why Is this Solution Unsatisfactory?
• The Solution from the Roman Catholic Side
• The Reformed Point of Departure
• The Tempering of Sin
• The Anabaptist Solution
• The Unbridled Operation of the Curse
• Common Grace Grounded in Creation
• Common Grace and Predestination
• Predestination in Connection with “All Things”
• The Connection between Predestination and Creation
• Triumph over Satan
• He Dwelt among Us
• He Dwelt among Israel
• Born of a Woman
• Jesus’ Increase
• Jesus’ Environment
• Jesus and Rome’s Administration of Justice
• Jesus and the Preparation of the World
• Christ and World History
• The Fullness of Time
• Common Grace and the Life of Grace
• Preparatory Grace
• Immediate Regeneration
• Common Grace in Our Genealogy
• Common Grace in Our Upbringing
• Vocation and One’s Lot in Life
• The Means of Grace
• The Effect of Particular Grace on Common Grace
• The Church as Institution and as Organism
• The National Church
• The Effect of the Church on the World
• A City Set on a Hill
• Common Grace in Sanctification
• The Grafting of the Wild Tree
• Moral Good in the Unregenerate
• Two Kinds of Self
• The Twofold Will
• It Is God Who Sanctifies Us
• Self-Purification
• The Conduct of Believers in the World
• A Necessary and Dangerous Dualism

• The Ordinary and the Extraordinary
• Common Grace and God’s Providential Ordination
• The Counsel of God
• Transcendence and Immanence
• Providence and Creation
• Bound Yet Free
• God’s Working through Means
• The Spiritual Forces of Evil
• The Manifestation of God’s Wrath
• Second Nature
• The Tempering of the Curse
• Nature Is Not Irreligious
• Man and Animal
• Instinctive Action
• The Use of Means
• Against the Curse
• Rebuke and Wrath
• Death Is an Enemy to Be Opposed
• The Unholy Character of All Affliction
• Curse and Creation
• Derailment
• The Flood and the Ark
• Finding the Means
• Precautionary Measures
• Suffering as Solidarity
• The Vaccination against Cowpox (1)
• The Vaccination against Cowpox (2)
• Insurance
• Insurance (2)
• Insurance (3)
• Insurance (4)
• Insurance (5)
• Insurance (6)
• Insurance (7)
• Suffering and Guilt
• The Course of the Ages
• The Close of the Age
• The Manifestation of the Image of God
• The Two Spheres of Life Intermingled
• The Contact between the Spheres
• Common Grace and the Son of God
• The Elect to Eternal Life
• The Purpose of the Church on Earth
• Christian Civilization
• The Completion of Common Grace
• The Influences of Common Grace on Particular Grace

Product Details

• Title: Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 2
• 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: 2017
• Pages: 926
• Format: Logos Digital, Hardcover
• Trim Size: 7x10
• ISBN: 9781577996699

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.