Abraham Kuyper: Christ Transforming Culture
In his 1951 book, Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr set out these models for Christian engagement with culture: Christ against culture, Christ in culture, and Christ transforming culture [1].
– The first calls for Christians to actively withdraw from society. This approach often fosters enmity between believers and unbelievers.
– The second states that Christians should imbibe the culture around them. Differences between Christians and the world become minimal and more confessional than practical. Thus, this approach results in Christians looking very much like the world.
– Finally, the third insists that Christians should not withdraw or imbibe, but transform the surrounding culture. These Christians are actively engaged with the surrounding culture as an agent of change, but are still set apart. This is the Reformational view.
Few Christians have exemplified this “Christ transforming culture” model as well as Abraham Kuyper.
Why Transform?
Abraham Kuyper was born in Maasluis Holland on 29 October 1837. Educated at the University of Leiden, he earned a BA in philology in 1858, and a PhD in theology in 1862. After graduating he began pastoring in the rural town of Beesd. Even though modern thought heavily influenced him at Leiden, the orthodox and pietistic convictions of his Beesd parishioners increasingly intrigued him. Through this influence he eventually converted to a very orthodox Reformed confession and began forming a Reformational model of cultural engagement: namely, Christ transforming culture.
To better understand this, however, we must first know something of his teaching on sphere sovereignty, antithesis, and common grace:
– Sphere sovereignty refers to the sovereignty that God exercises through common, everyday institutions, such as government, church, and family. Consequently, Christians shouldn’t withdraw from these institutions, but minister through them. Thus, Kuyper would have found the “Christ against culture” model untenable.
– However, Kuyper also realized that believers and unbelievers obtain and assimilate knowledge differently (epistemology)—what he referred to as “antithesis.” Thus, Christians are limited in their ability to be like the surrounding culture, making the “Christ in culture” model insufficient as well.
– Lastly, Kuyper taught that God has given a degree of grace to all humanity to curb the effects of sin. This is common grace. And it refers to those agents that God has placed in creation to lessen the Fall’s effects—science and education, for example. Thus Kuyper taught that God calls us to transform our culture through these agents.
Knowing these three concepts helps us better understand Kuyper’s emphasis on transforming culture, rather than immersing ourselves in it or retreating from it.
Today we remember Kuyper as a visionary for his efforts in transforming his culture. Though his ideas were not new, since the reformers had similarly engaged their culture with the same approach, Kuyper helped pioneer this model of cultural engagement: Christ transforming culture. We see this especially in his interaction with politics, education, and communication.
Christ Transforming Culture
a. Politics
One avenue Kuyper sought to transform his culture was through politics. It was at Beesd that he began arguing for greater lay power within the church and more democracy in civil politics. He believed this would result in more just and equitable church and state governments.
By 1867, Kuyper had begun calling for change in the state educational system. At the time, state schools were nominally Christian. However, Kuyper suggested that state schools should reflect the religious diversity of its citizenry. He believed it unconscionable to require all schools to be Christian, especially since the result was a greatly diluted Christian message. Instead, he insisted that each school should be publically funded, though free to choose its religious affiliation and stance.
In 1870, Kuyper was transferred to Amsterdam, where his influence expanded greatly. Only four years later, he was elected to the Second Chamber of the Dutch States General. And within ten years, he had formed the Netherland’s first mass political organization: the Anti-Revolutionary movement, which promoted conservative orthodox policies.
He also began pushing for reforms in the church-state relationship and calling for conservative, confessional orthodoxy and independence from state control. Kuyper believed in a “‘free church,’ liberated from bureaucratic hierarchy, [that] would remove the shelter heresy had found in it and release the long-suppressed energies of local congregations” [2].
However, the Netherlands Reformed Church (NHK) disagreed with Kuyper on this point, and he was officially disciplined in 1886. As a result, he left, taking 10% of the NHK with him. They would join up with another dissenting group in 1892, and become the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands.
Simultaneously, Kuyper began pushing for more serious church engagement with the entire culture. And he began by making a very surprising alliance.
Kuyper saw that, alone, the conservative Reformed Christians could not affect great political changes. So he made a bold political alliance with the Dutch Roman Catholic citizens who were more ideologically akin to them than the liberal Protestants. Together the two groups affected many changes in labor relations, enfranchisement, and education.
Kuyper’s highest point politically came in 1901 when he was elected Prime Minister of the Netherlands—a post he would hold for four years. Finally, orthodox Christians were being heard in the public square. Yet, they also needed to be heard in the academic world.
b. Education
In conjunction with Kuyper’s belief that the government should fund all schools equally and allow diversity in religious affiliation, he also advocated for orthodox Christian schools to operate without bureaucratic, governmental control. He believed that such autonomy would foster cultural diversity and protect religious orthodoxy. This was important to Kuyper because he realized that Christians interpret knowledge differently than non-Christians. Thus to protect religious orthodoxy, education must exist outside of governmental control.
Let’s consider what this looked like practically for Kuyper. Take modern science: Recognizing that sin has darkened our understanding, Kuyper taught that any attempt to reach scientific knowledge without the benefit of regeneration is “bound to acquire a distorted view of things, and thereby reach false conclusions” [3]. This is why Kuyper so strongly advocated for autonomous Christian schools.
Scripture is clear that the difference between worldly and godly knowledge lies in the spirit of the investigating subject (1 Cor. 2:11-15). In fact, so prophetic was Kuyper that he foretold the dilemma of 20th century man: namely, because regenerate and unregenerate scientists begin from differing starting points, a twofold science has emerged. The analysis of the exact same data at times produces differing results. Kuyper believed true Christians must begin with God’s revealed Word.
For these reasons, Kuyper sought to form an independent Christian educational system. And he was successful in this venture. He even opened a Dutch Reformed University in 1880—the Free University. There, he trained others to engage the culture through the Reformational, Christ-transforming-culture model of cultural engagement. Yet undergirding both the political and educational segments of his cultural engagement was communications.
c. Communications
The last piece of the trifecta lay in communication. If Kuyper was going to teach his views of Reformational thought to as broad an audience as possible, communication was essential. So, in addition to his political and educational ventures, he also entered the world of print media.
In fact, Kuyper bought, edited, and wrote for two newspapers: The Herald and the Standard—the first a weekly and the second a daily publication. Over a six-year period, he printed his seminal works on common grace in articles for The Herald, in addition to his contributions concerning sphere sovereignty and antithesis. He believed this the best means to reach the most people with the Reformational philosophy of cultural engagement.
The importance of Kuyper’s involvement with print media cannot be overstated. Through it, he was able to reach a vast audience of lay people, and through it he taught an entire population how to engage the culture around them for Christ—hence Christ transforming culture.
Conclusion
Perhaps Kuyper’s most famous quotation is this: “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!’” [4]. His lasting legacy is his concerted efforts to realize the immensity of this statement in his own life, especially in the public square, education, and communication.
Kuyper has directly influenced many great, 20th century Christian thinkers, including C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Chuck Colson. He profoundly affected the political scene in the Netherlands and South Africa. And lastly, his thoughts have become highly revered in Western seminaries.
Though our cultural engagement may not be identical to Kuyper’s, his example for cultural engagement is priceless. He has much to teach us. Everything in our lives is subject to God’s sovereignty: politics, education, communications, and the whole of our human existence.
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[1] Niebuhr had two other categories. However, we may view these as sub-groups of the other three which I have listed. Also, discussing them here would unnecessarily cloud the issue for the purposes of this essay.
[2] Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, First Edition, s.v. “Abraham Kuyper” by J. D. Bratt, 352.
[3] Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 52.
[4] Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, 354.
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