A comprehensive Christian worldview: Abraham Kuyper

How are we to develop a comprehensive worldview? Abraham Kuyper provides some insights.

“From a special principle a peculiar insight [must] be obtained into the three fundamental relations of all human life: viz., (1) our relation to God, (2) our relation to man, and (3) our relation to the world.” (Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans 1999 p. 19.)

Note the “special principle.” This is the idea at the core of a worldview which directs it. Kuyper provides specific examples of three worldviews.

“This was the case with Paganism, which in its most general form is known by the fact that it surmises, assumes and worships God in the creature. This applies to the lowest Animism, as well as to the highest Buddhism. Paganism does not rise to the conception of the independent existence of a God beyond and above the creature. But even in this imperfect form it has for its starting-point a definite interpretation of the relation of the infinite to the finite, and to this it owed its power to produce a finished form for human society. Simply because it possessed this significant starting point [it was] able to produce a form of its own for the whole of human life.” (Ibid., 20)

According to Kuyper, the starting point for any consistent worldview is a conception of the relationship of the divine to the human.

“It is the same with Islamism, which is characterized by its purely anti-pagan ideal, cutting off all contact between the creature and God . . . As antipode, Islam was possessed of an equally far-reaching tendency, and was also able to originate an entirely peculiar world of human life.” (Ibid.)

We have seen how Islam refuses the divinity of Christ because they cannot see how anything can be both God and man.

“The same is the case with Romanism. Here also the papal tiara, the hierarchy, the mass, etc., are but the outcome of one fundamental thought: viz., that God enters into fellowship with the creature by means of a mystical middle-link, which is the Church;–not taken as a mystic organism, but as a visible, palpable and tangible institution. Here the Church stands between God and the world, and so far as it was able to adopt the world and to inspire it, Romanism also created a form of its own for human society.” (Ibid., 21)

But the Protestant movement, endowed as it is with so much truth, has not developed itself into such a profound life-system

“Protestantism alone wanders about in the wilderness without aim or direction, moving hither and thither, without making any progress . . . And why did we, Christians, stand so weak in the face of this Modernism? Why did we constantly lose ground? Simply because we were devoid of an equal unity of life-conception, such as alone could enable us with irresistible energy to repel the enemy at the frontier. This unity of life-conception, however, is never to be found in a vague conception or Protestantism winding itself as it does in all kinds of tortuosities…” (Ibid., 19)

There is, however, a comprehensive and consistent Christian worldview, and Kuyper finds it in what he refers to as “Calvinism.”

“Calvinism takes its stand with a fundamental thought which is equally profound. It does not seek God in the creature, as Paganism; it does not isolate God from the creature, as Islamism; it posits no mediate communion between God and the creature, as does Romanism; but proclaims the exalted thought that, although standing in high majesty above the creature, God enters into immediate fellowship with the creature, as God the Holy Spirit. This is even the heart and kernel of the Calvinistic confession of predestination. There is communion with God, but only in entire accord with his counsel of peace from all eternity. Thus there is no grace but such as comes to us immediately from God. At every moment of our existence, our entire spiritual life rests in God Himself.” (Ibid., 21)

More to come . . .