The Kuyperian vision for culture: what is it, and how is it doing? Part I

Posted on August 18, 2009 by dsnoke |1 Comment

Many evangelicals have never heard of Abraham Kuyper, but most have been influenced by him far more than they know.  Kuyper was a Dutch pastor and politician who lived in the last 1800’s up to the early 1900’s. He was initially an enthusiastic “modernist” and was trained in modernism at seminary. Modernism is the school of thought, sometimes also called classic liberalism, which says that science, reason and logic are the hope for the future of mankind, sufficient for solving all important problems, and the old notions of religion and traditional morality must be discarded as things of the past. Kuyper, as a modernist, encountered robust, living Christian orthodoxy in his first experience as a rural pastor in Holland, and was eventually converted.  He still loved science and the academic world (“science,” as he would have defined it, included not just the “hard sciences” but all the reasoned endeavors of the university). He eventually propounded a very definite vision for the interaction of the church and culture, which can be called the Kuyperian vision, though of course others contributed to this view before and after Kuyper. 

The Kuyperian Vision and the Puritan Vision

For more detail and history, see http://kuyperian.blogspot.com/2004/10/what-does-it-mean-to-be-kuyperian.html. Since first publishing this essay, I have learned of at least two different strands of Kuyperian thought which have significant differences. I am mainly going to present the strand presented by people like Os Guiness starting in the 1970’s, and presented to me in the Christian Reformed Church I attended for several years in the 1980’s. While some would say some aspects are a strong departure from Kuyper himself, there are main elements that I think do go back to Kuyper.

The main elements of the Kuyperian vision are the following:

1) Calvinism. The main element of Calvinism which becomes part of the Kuyperian vision is the notion of the “sovereignty of God.” This basically is taken to mean that God cares about every little thing in the world; there are not large parts of the world that are of no concern to him or beyond his control. In particular, the devil is not in control and the world does not belong to him, even though evil is real.

Classically, Calvinism includes the concepts of predestination of individual conversions. But in many Kuyperian circles, this is downplayed and being Calvinist is more strongly associated with the above notion of concern for the whole world.

2) From this notion a general definition of the “kingdom of God” is developed. The kingdom of God, in much classical Christian thought, is equated with God’s people, the totality of all God’s people wherever they are. Kuyper generalized this much further. In his view, the kingdom of God is wherever there is anything beautiful, true, or honorable that glorifies God.

This is a crucial point. It not only implies that non-Christians have true knowledge and that when they do good, they are building the kingdom of God, even if they don’t know it (Kuyper termed this “common grace”). That might not affect strategy that much; it would just be a redefinition. What does affect strategy is the further implication that Christians are building the kingdom of God any time they are doing good work, even if they are not bringing people into the kingdom of God, i.e., converting hearts and making disciples. This contrasts with many Christians’ notion that “ministry” is a higher calling than secular work.

3) Another key aspect of Kuyper’s vision is the concept of “world view” (“weltanschauung”). The Christian looks at everything in the world differently, through the lens of faith. This notion influenced later scholar Cornelius van Til (US born, of Dutch descent) in the early 1900’s to develop his view of “presuppositionalism.”  This outlook says that even given the same “facts,” we can draw very different conclusions because of our different outlooks on the world. Kuyper’s view can be summarized in relation to the following table in regard to science:

“philosophical world view” ————————–

“theories”

“data”

In the Kuyperian view, Christians and non-Christians can agree on the basic data and even on the general theories drawn from the data, but can draw radically different conclusions at the highest level of world view. The Kuyperian sees evangelism as primarily at this level: not challenging the facts and theories of modern science, but challenging the overarching conclusions which are claimed to follow from them. So, for example, a Kuyperian would not typically challenge the facts of genetics and archaeology, nor the theory of Darwinian evolution, but would strenuously object that atheism follows from either the scientific facts or the theory of evolution.

The same pyramid can be generalized to include art:

“philosophical world view” ————————–

“style”

“technique”

A Kuyperian artist would say that a Christian can learn technique from non-Christians (e.g. how to play an instrument, or how to make a film), and also adopt non-Christian styles (e.g. rock, jazz, rap, horror films, romance novels) without accepting that these demand adherence to a non-Christian world view. Similar hierarchies can be made for other cultural endeavors such as law, politics, business, engineering, etc.

4) A last element can be called “excellence.” The Christian honors God by doing the best possible work in whatever field of work he or she has chosen. God is not honored by shoddy work. An implication of this is that Christians do well if they become experts according to all the standards of the secular world. This typically means buying into all the world offers in the two “lower” categories in my above tables, while remaining committed to a Christian world view at the higher level.

Although many do not know the name of Kuyper, his influence is everywhere. For example, the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh, which is one of the largest evangelical youth conferences in the nation, is thoroughly and openly Kuyperian. Francis Schaeffer, who had huge impact in evangelical circles, had tremendous influence from Kuyper, as well as his friend Os Guiness. One could call, in some sense, the whole evangelical movement a Kuyperian movement, as a movement which started in the 1960’s as a definite counter-movement to fundamentalism.

The dominant contrast to the Kuyperian vision can be called the “city on a hill” vision; it is often called the “fundamentalist” view, though many have held this view who would not identify themselves as fundamentalists. It can be traced to the Puritans, among others, so I will call it the Puritan vision, as the word “fundamentalist” calls to mind a number of other associated foibles. Some key elements:

1) Christians need to keep a distinctive identity, different from the “world” which consists of all non-Christians. As such, they will form an attractive community which others will want to join (the “city on a hill”).

2) If the practices of the “world” impinge on the Christian community too much, Christians must find a way to withdraw in order to maintain their purity and distinctiveness. (“Come out from them and be separate, lest you take part in her sins,” Revelation 18:4, was an early rallying cry.)

3) The primary goal of the church is saving souls, bringing people into the kingdom of God and giving them the hope of heaven.

4) Acceptance by the world as experts or otherwise is not important, and in fact, lack of acceptance or persecution is to be expected; in general, a sense of being “anti” the dominant culture, and “subversive” to it, prevails.

These two positions are not completely mutually exclusive, and there are many possible middle positions that take elements from each. I am going to argue in the next post that we should take elements of each, but for most evangelicals, this means going back more toward the Puritan/fundamentalist vision than most people embrace right now.

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