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Kuyper, Covid, and Conscience

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The last time I read Abraham Kuyper’s 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary was 20 years ago. Myself and many others were prompted by John Piper’s frequently quotation of Kuyper’s words “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!” I was prompted to read it again after finishing Ruler of Kings by Joseph Boot.

What immediately struck me was how clearly Kuyper speaks to the present. Before we look back at his argument, I want to begin with his scathing rebuke for future generations who fail to defend liberty of conscience.

“It has cost a heroic struggle to wrest this greatest of all human liberties from the grasp of despotism; and streams of human blood have been poured out before the object was attained. But for this very reason every son of the Reformation tramples upon the honor of the fathers, who does not assiduously and without retrenching, defend this palladium of our liberties. In order that it may be able to rule men, the government must respect this deepest ethical power of our human existence. A nation, consisting of citizens whose consciences are bruised, is itself broken in its national strength.”

Just how important is liberty of conscience? Kuyper explains, “A man of ripe and rich development will rather become a voluntary exile, will rather suffer imprisonment, nay, even sacrifice life itself, than tolerate constraint in the forum of his conscience. . .  The government…must give way itself to the Sovereign conscience.”

On what grounds is a man able to rebel against his government in defense of liberty of conscience? In what follows he argues that obedience to and rebellion against government is rooted in divine sovereignty. Not only is this rebellion rooted in divine sovereignty he will argue that rebellion against tyrants is submission to God.

“It makes it easy for us to obey authority, because, in all authority, it causes us to honor the demand of divine sovereignty. It lifts us from an obedience born of dread of the strong arm, into an obedience for conscience sake. It teaches us to look upward from the existing law to the source of the eternal Right in God, and it creates in us the indomitable courage incessantly to protest against the unrighteousness of the law in the name of this highest Right. And however powerfully the State may assert itself and oppress the free individual development, above that Powerful State there is always glittering, before our soul’s eye, as infinitely more powerful, the majesty of the King of kings, Whose righteous bar ever maintains the right of appeal for all the oppressed, and unto Whom the prayer of the people ever ascends, to bless our nation and, in that nation, us and our house!

. . . Bound by its own mandate. Therefore, the government may neither ignore nor modify nor disrupt the divine mandate, under which these social spheres stand. The sovereignty, by the grace of God, of the government is here set aside and limited, for God’s sake, by another sovereignty, which is equally divine in origin. Neither the life of science nor of art, nor of agriculture, nor of industry, nor of commerce, nor of navigation, nor of the family, nor of human relationship may be coerced to suit itself to the grace of the government. The State may never become an octopus, which stifles the whole of life. It must occupy its own place, on its own root, among all the other trees of the forest, and thus it has to honor and maintain every form of life which grows independently in its own sacred autonomy.

. . . Let it suffice to have shown that Calvinism protests against State-omnipotence; against the horrible conception that no right exists above and beyond existing laws; and against the pride of absolutism, which recognizes no constitutional rights, except as the result of princely favor.”

What Kuyper explains that all of these social spheres have a divine origin and exist under one divine Sovereign. As such the state has no right to become “an octopus” with its suffocating tentacles wrapped tightly around other spheres of life. The State has both a specific divinely instituted purpose as well as divinely instituted limited sphere of influence. Observing the majority Protestant reaction to the multitude of state-sanctioned tyrannies in 2020 it is apparent that these concepts were not at the forefront of the evangelical mind.

We are given some indications of the root cause of our present failures as Kuyper examines the failings of Protestants in his own day. After looking at what he calls a “unity of life-system,” or worldview, of Catholicism and Islam he laments:

“Protestantism alone wanders about in the wilderness without aim or direction, moving hither and thither, without making any progress.”

He further explains the precarious situation in which the church finds herself:

“. . . among Protestant nations Pantheism, born from the new German Philosophy and owing its concrete evolution-form to Darwin, claims for itself more and more the supremacy in every sphere of human life, even in that of theology, and under all sorts of names tries to overthrow our Christian traditions, and is bent even upon exchanging the heritage of our fathers for a hopeless modern Buddhism. . .

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. . .

The responsibility for this degeneration undoubtedly rests in part with the Christian churches themselves, not excepting those of the Reformation. . . these last churches had fallen asleep, had allowed leaf and flower to wither on their branches, and had apparently become forgetful of their duties in reference to humanity at large, and the whole sphere of human life.”

Returning to the opening rebuke we have indeed failed to “assiduously and without retrenching, defend this palladium of our liberties” and in that failure we have trampled upon the honor of forebears who poured out streams of blood to attain it. Indeed many even celebrated this betrayal as they walked lockstep in obedience to lockdowns and rallied in support of vaccine mandates that trampled upon liberty of conscience and broke both our own national strength and that of many nations around the globe. We have failed, quite miserably to live up to Kuyper’s expectation that “a man of ripe and rich development will rather become a voluntary exile, will rather suffer imprisonment, nay, even sacrifice life itself, than tolerate constraint in the forum of his conscience.” We must repent of forgetting our “duties in reference to humanity at large, and the whole sphere of human life.” As the octopus-like tentacles of globalist tyrants continue to tighten and extend their grip around every sphere of human existence we must recover what he calls “the special trait of Calvinism.”

“But it remained the special trait of Calvinism that it placed the believer before the face of God, not only in His church, but also in his personal, family, social, and political life. The majesty of God, and the authority of God press upon the Calvinist in the whole of his human existence. He is a pilgrim, not in the sense that he is marching through a world with which he has no concern, but in the sense that at every step of the long way he must remember his responsibility to that God so full of majesty, who awaits him at his journey’s end. In front of the Portal which opens for him, on the entrance into Eternity, stands the last Judgment; and that judgment shall be one broad and comprehensive test, to ascertain whether the long pilgrimage has been accomplished with a heart that aimed at God’s glory, and in accordance with the ordinances of the Most High.

What now does the Calvinist mean by his faith in the ordnances of God? Nothing less than the firmly rooted conviction that all life has first been in the thoughts of God, before it came to be realized in Creation. Hence all created life necessarily bears in itself a law for its existence, instituted by God Himself.”

Indeed the whole of our life is to be lived before the face of God from church and family life to business and politics and the arts. Only when we recover this will be able to truly grasp and apply Kuyper’s exclamation;

“there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life of which Christ, Who is Sovereign of all, does not cry: “Mine!”

Now, we declare that we have heard that cry, and only in response to that cry have we approached this task which surpasses our human strength. We had heard brethren complain about their tragic impotence. Because their learning did not fit their principle and left them defenseless, they could not plead their principle with the power commensurate with the glory of that principle. We had heard the sighs of our Christian people who, in the shame of their self-abasement, again learned to pray for captains to lead them, for shepherds to tend them, and for prophets to inspire them. We realized that the glory of the Christ may not thus remain trodden tinder scoffers’ feet. As surely as we adored Him with the love of our souls we must again build in His Name. And it was of no avail to look upon our little power or the superior might of our opponents, or the preposterousness of such a daring attempt. The fire continued to burn in our bones. There was One, mightier than we, Who urged and spurred us on. We could not rest. In spite of ourselves we had to go forward. Even the fact that some of our brethren, advising against building at this time, preferred living in with Humanism, was a painful source of shame, but increased the inner urge, because the hesitation of such men was an increasingly strong threat to the future of our life principle.”

We too are surrounded by those who are content to live in humanism, who are content to let the secularists win, who are squabbling for seats at tables they should be flipping over. May we not trample upon the blood bought liberties secured by our forebears. May that same fire burn within our bones and may we once again begin to build and subject the whole domain of human existence to the sovereignty of Christ.

Revisiting Abortion and the Illusion of Sovereignty: Addressing the Real Issue

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I originally posted the following article four years ago, here, and with the current discussion of Planned Parenthood and the renewed cultural debate on abortion this is a particularly relevant post to revisit. What follows is an unedited reposting of my 2011 article followed by a brief addendum to clarify the original conclusion.

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Abortion and the Illusion of Sovereignty: Addressing the Real Issue

This Sunday’s cover story, “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy”, for The New York Times Magazine is nothing new. I wrote several years ago, in “When the Fertility Clinic Meets the Abortion Clinic: A Modern Paradox,” about a similar article in the Los Angeles Times. In fact the only thing that has changed in these four years are the numbers. The reasons and the response are the same things that have been around since the first abortion and if we were to go back further to the origins of infanticide. When reading these articles, or the responses to them, they are so predictable that they almost appear to be scripted. With that I hope to take a departure from the typical response and argue that the real issue here is not life, it is not choice, and it is not even murder. The real issue is sovereignty.

Let me explain what I mean. In her June article, “Yes, Abortion is Killing. But It’s the Lesser Evil,” Antonia Senior explains how having a child changed her perspective regarding abortion. After explaining the lack of a consensus regarding a scientific or philosophical definition of life she concludes,

What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person — forged in my womb, not by my mothering.

Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life

She then explains that such conclusions have resulted in a movement aimed at separating feminism from “fertility control.” However, she views this as entirely incompatible with the central aim of feminism exclaiming, “The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology.” The freedom of women then depends upon one thing the unencumbered exercise of the will.

With a shocking candor she concludes,

As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.

For Antonia Senior, and I would argue for all of us, the principal issue is sovereignty, a woman’s ultimate right to impose her will upon herself and upon others.

Sovereignty occurs vertically in the form of worship, we could use other words but the concept remains the same. We either rejoice in the sovereignty of the God in whose image we are made or we deny it by worshipping any number of god’s made in our image. Horizontally human interaction exists upon a continuum of two extremes; escape and conflict. Both extremes end in death and both are false exercises of sovereignty. At the extreme end of escape is suicide where the sovereign self claims sovereignty over the self by taking one’s life. At the extreme end of conflict lies murder where the sovereign self claims sovereignty over another by taking another’s life.

The first two articles mentioned, “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” and “The abortion debate brought home,” regarding reduction, which let’s be honest is a clever play on words to sanitize something far more grisly and sinister, bring another exercise of sovereignty into the question, namely in vitro fertilization and the creation of life. Imposing one’s will upon one’s own biology may require medical assistance and donated eggs which is where our current discussion often begins. With in vitro fertilization, when multiple embryos are transferred, there is always the possibility of multiple embryos implanting and when multiple babies are not wanted or the mother is unable to give birth to multiple children then one or more of them must be put to death. In 1988 Dr. Mark Evans penned guidelines for this procedure stating that “most reductions below twins violated ethical principles.” Things have changed over the past 23 years; the medical community has rethought its ethics and is now willing and able to reduce your pregnancy to one. “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” ends with a counterintuitive conclusion. After choosing to reduce their pregnancy to one child the author asks the women what would happen if they miscarried to which one of them replied, “I’ve come to realize there’s only so much we can control. There’s a point where you just have to let nature take its course.”

After all this talk of a woman’s complete control of her own fertility comes the tragic conclusion that “there’s only so much we can control.” Ultimately you cannot impose your will upon your biology because ultimately you are not sovereign. Your sovereignty is an illusion.

How are we to respond to this? Should we call our senator or state representative? Should we start building picket signs and begin protesting abortion clinics? No, we must respond with the Gospel, in word and deed. We must respond in the same way that God responds to humanity’s first act of false sovereignty in the garden, with grace and the promise that in Christ we will be liberated not unto self but from self and sin and set free to worship the one true Sovereign. Any other response is incalculably inadequate and nearsighted.

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Addendum 2015-08-05

The church is a global reality and when I address issues, such as this one, my primary concern is how the global church should respond. And our primary response and concern must be proclaiming and incarnating the Gospel (Ephesians 6:10-20). After all abortions do not occur simply because they are legal or because of Planned Parenthood. No, they occur because of our insatiable desire for control, for sovereignty; they occur because humans, both as individuals and as humanity, a global culture, are unflinchingly committed to our rebellion against the true Sovereign. That must be our first and primary response. Any other primary response is, as I said four years ago, incalculably inadequate and nearsighted.

Now, I still have little patience for evangelical political activism. As Ed Stetzer lamented in Breaking the Missional Code, ” For many, evangelicals have become a voting block rather than a spiritual force” (2006:9). Political activism alone, defunding Planned Parenthood for example, would only be as beneficial as God bringing the Jews out of Egypt without also bringing them to Himself. But in 2011 I was unbalanced and failed to recognize the uniqueness of the American situation. The global church must respond with the Gospel, as in many places political change is not possible in the same way that it is in the United States. The church mush make the gospel our primary concern, we must make the truth known, we must seek to see men and women reconciled to the God whose image their born and unborn children bear.

At the same time when there is opportunity seek political change we must do so humbly, with a knowledge that political change is important but not ultimate. God is redeeming the whole of creation from the cancerous cells growing in your body and the raging of the seas to the political and cultural structures of man. He is, and ultimately will, set those things right, their rebellion will be brought to an end, and the earth will be renewed and inhabited by the new humanity. But the renewal of creation is inextricably tied to the reconciliation of God and man (Romans 8:18ff.). So feel free to contact the political powers that be and seek to persuade those who make those decisions but do so knowing that what your neighbor who is considering an abortion needs most is not legislation but reconciliation.

I hope this was a beneficial read and I hope that this addendum has clarified what was lacking in my previous conclusion.

Biblical Authorship… A Divine Message With Human Personality

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It is an amazing thing to think about the authorship of the Bible. To think about a man writing it, under the influence of the Holy Spirit is one thing but to think about everything that has happened aside of writing is even better. We have found numerous scrolls and pieces of ancient manuscripts that prove the age old book dates back to the period it claims to be written during. This helps scholars find misprinted or mistranslated words in the text and make for a better and more reliable translation. The amazing thing about all of this is that it is not man’s doing or finding it is God’s plan in revealing these things on his timing.

Divine Preservation

Some ask why we have not found any originals but just copies and manuscripts that are years younger than when the original authors composed. The only answer that is both logical and biblical is that God did not intend for those to be found because he knew the prideful and selfish ways of his people. He knew that if we did have the originals we would worship the pieces of papyrus and stone rather than the words engraved on them. We see this in both the biography of Israel in their worship of hand made idols as well as the Athenian worship of comets and other galactic objects. In our finite minds, we would hold to those pieces of paper as if they were God himself, we would worship them and revert to the days before the protestant reformation, the days when artifacts and icons were worshiped by Catholicism.

Divine Authorship

It is hard to comprehend that God could do such a thing through sinful humans, that he could use them to compose a book that is both flawless and without error. From start to finish it is both one macro-narrative as well as multiple short-stories that add up and fit perfectly like a puzzle forming a beautiful image from its tiny pieces. The way I think about it is descriptive of a painter. A painter sets out to put together a beautiful painting of a landscape with different brushes and colors. Although the painter has a plan of what he wants the final portrait to look like, he doesn’t have an exact image in his head because each brush and color has its own distinct personality and style. God has used many people and many stories the put together His law, His Gospel, and His narrative, but the big picture is an image that could only have been conceived by God Himself.

Rethinking the Seeker Paradigms

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I am sure that most of you are familiar with the Seeker Driven and Seeker Sensitive paradigms of corporate worship.  They have after all been popular methods of “church growth” for quite some time now.  In a recent conversation I had with a friend from seminary he described his church as being “seeker coherent” a phrase which I think adequately describes the biblical model for corporate worship and also fits well within the current church growth jargon so as to be easily understood.  I want to look at these three paradigms side by side and see how this new category of Seeker Coherent differs from the other two.  I will begin by stating that both the Seeker Driven and Seeker Sensitive paradigms are built upon false presuppositions which find no biblical support.

Seeker Driven

This model is syncretistic at best.  The needs of the so called “seeker” drive the direction of all that the church does.  This means that the church’s theology and methodology are radically altered by the needs of those it is seeking to attract.  In this paradigm the church tends to be focused on meeting felt needs, which are usually physical or psychological, rather than on proclaiming the gospel and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.

Seeker Sensitive

This is by far the most popular model within Evangelicalism and chances are that the methodology of the corporate worship service that you attend has been profoundly affected by this methodology.  This model can be summarized by the phrase “build it and they will come” like the above model it presupposes that hordes of lost individuals in rebellion against their creator are lining up to attend corporate worship somewhere every Sunday.  Within this model the focus is on meeting felt needs as above and gospel proclamation, although this can be debated, rather than equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.  Within this model the pastor is the church’s primary evangelist and “seekers” are brought to this corporate event to hear the gospel.

Seeker Coherent

Unlike the above two models this model’s primary focus in on equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.  Since corporate worship is the gathering of the people of God to worship God it is counterintuitive to make the central focus of this event the evangelization of the lost.  Rather the corporate gathering of the church aims to glorify God and to equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-13).  If it is all about equipping believers and glorifying God then why have seeker in the title?  I think the answer is found in Scripture.

“22Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. 23If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? 24But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, 25the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (I Corinthians 14:22-25).

There is far too much going on in this text to fully explain here; however, several observations can be made that are pertinent to the discussion at hand.  Critical to understanding the presence of unbelievers in the corporate assembly of the church is the repetition of the conjunction “if” Paul is giving a hypothetical situation.  Mass amounts of unbelievers entering the assembly is not normative; this is a devastating blow to the Seeker Driven and Seeker Sensitive paradigms.  Furthermore, if Paul were encouraging a Seeker Driven/Sensitive paradigm, as proponents of these views claim, then why would he discourage the use of tongues if they are a sign for unbelievers?  Rather he encourages them to prophesy, to corporately proclaim the Word of God, and because of this the unbeliever will be convicted of both his sin and the presence of God.  What Paul is encouraging them to do is to focus on equipping the saints for the work of the ministry to preach to proclaim the Word of God; he want the glory of God and the people of God to be the central focus of the corporate gathering of the Church.

However, notice also what he is arguing for.  He is arguing that what happens in the assembly should be coherent, easily understood, by any unbelievers who should enter.  Thus we have a church both fulfilling its biblical purpose and doing so in a way that is comprehensible to the culture in which that church gathers.

An Addendum

While “Seeker Coherent” fits well within the current church growth lingo I do not prefer to use the term “seeker” because it seems to contradict Romans 3:10-11.  Within Scripture there is a category of individuals known as “God-fearing.”  Such language is certainly unpopular in an age where God is viewed as a cosmic Santa Clause rather than a sovereign Creator and Judge; however, different terminology should be used to emphasize the total depravity of man and the sovereignty of God in electing individuals to salvation.

A Brief Respite from Finals Week

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This is the last week of class at TMS and next week is finals week so I do not have time to post much. However, I thought I would pass along an interesting post from the Logos Bible Software Blog entitled Smokers Drive Up Costs of Bibles the article is both interesting and contains a very humorous photo, enjoy. I would also recommend that you go to Mark Driscoll’s blog and watch The Banned Church Planting Video it is only eight minutes and worth the time.