Category Archives: Abraham Kuyper

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.27a. What is the “knowledge” of good and evil?

08 Tuesday Nov 2022

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The previous post on Kuyper’s Common Grace, volume 1 may be found here.

Now on to the first question of chapter

Genesis 3:22 (ESV)

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”

What then is meant by the statement that the tree from which Adam and Eve were not to eat was the tree of the “Knowledge of Good and Evil.” The obvious answer, at least when we consider the frequency with which it is raised, is that the knowledge is the knowledge of experience. How could Adam and Eve “know” evil without being evil? I could know about arson or embezzlement or any number of crimes, without knowing what is like to commit such crimes. And perhaps the experience of evil would give me a different knowledge of the “good.”

Kuyper says that the held this position until he faced two objections with the explanation could not meet. Before we come to the objections, I would like to stop at Kuyper’s epistemic modesty, “it is fitting that one not begin by rejecting the work of one’s predecessors but by associating oneself with it.” Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World: The Historical Section, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Melvin Flikkema, and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, vol. 1, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute, 2015), 236.

What then are the objections. The first derives from the word of God respecting the effect of Adam and Eve eating from the tree, “they have become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” God cannot have experiential knowledge of evil, therefore, the comparison does not work. Thus, the knowledge cannot mean “experiential” knowledge.

The second objection is that sinning gives us no experience of “good.” But I believe that objection can be met by merely stating experiential knowledge of evil throws experiential knowledge of good (which Adam did have prior to eating) into relief and thus one gains a sort of experience of good with could not be had before.

Kuyper suggests that the knowledge here refers to not the experience of the thing but the choice:

4           Let us choose what is right;

let us know among ourselves what is good.

Job 34:4 (ESV) In this passage, choose is parallel to know, as right is parallel to good. He gives as an example,  “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Genesis 18:19 (ESV) The ESV does the work for Kuyper, because the word translated “chosen,” “For I have chosen him” is the word ydh: the verb commonly translated as “to know.”  The KJV (for instance) has “For I know him.”

This at least makes the argument plausible: that we should understand ydh (commonly translated “to know”) as to choose. The next test is whether that translation makes sense of Gen. 3:22

Kuyper further clarifies this use of “know” for “choose”: I know a thing, I evaluate, I then choose. Does that make sense of Gen. 3:22?  Yes, the human being – rather than accept the valuation of God as to good and evil – has appropriate this power to himself.

Thus, the probation of Adam was, Will you allow God to make the determination of what is good or evil? Will commit moral valuation to me, or will you seek to make this determination yourself.

The tree thus provokes conscience, because conscience can only have play if there is a potential conflict between moral choices.

This leads to an understanding of human psychology. First, there is the evaluation. The evaluation of a thing as good or bad then brings the will to act based upon that judgment. However, that determination is subject to a further judgment of God. Conscience rightly working concurs with God on the moral valuation of a behavior, “Conscience is a conflict between two judgments: the judgment of man himself and that of God.” (242)

Such a determination corresponds well to the use of similar language by Paul:

Romans 1:28 (ESV)

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

The first verb in that sentence, “see fit” comes from a verb which means to test and approve [dokimazo]

δοκιμάζωc: to regard something as genuine or worthy on the basis of testing—‘to judge to be genuine, to judge as good, to approve.’ μακάριος ὁ μὴ κρίνων ἑαυτὸν ἐν ᾧ δοκιμάζει ‘happy is the man who doesn’t cause himself to be condemned by what he judges to be good’ Ro 14:22; καθὼς οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν τὸν θεὸν ἔχειν ἐν ἐπιγνώσει ‘since they did not approve of retaining the knowledge of God’ or ‘… of acknowledging God’ Ro 1:28. For another interpretation of δοκιμάζω in Ro 1:28, see 30.98.

Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 363.

The word translated as “debased” mind means “not” tested or approved. If you will not evaluate God correctly, you will be evaluated as condemned. By not accepting God’s evaluation of good and evil, we become evaluated as evil (or we have a mind that cannot properly evaluate). This is then matched by Romans 12:1-2

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV). Notice verse 2, you will be given the Spirit and thus in this transformation will begin to be able to test things to discern (by testing discern is the same verb dokimazo as used in Romans 1:28.

By eating the of the tree, Adam rejected God’s evaluation and was cast from the Garden. Romans 1:28 explains that having rejected God’s evaluation we are evaluated as debased (or we are unable to judge) and only in renewal of our mind can we begin to regain a right evaluation (by following God’s valuation).

Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.26

14 Tuesday Jun 2022

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Chapter 26

This chapter raises two issues, first the serpent. Kuyper takes it that Eve was surprised to hear from the Serpent. This is a disordering of nature: humans speak to and about animals, but speech moves in only one way.  She should have or must have realized this was some alien power. In Genesis 2:15, God instructed Adam to “keep” the Garden.  That would infer that something dangerous was about.

The verb sh-m-r, to keep, does mean (in appropriate places) an action to protect or preserve.  For instance, in 1 Samuel 25:12, David speaks of “guarding” Nabal’s property. As Wenham explains, “Similarly, שׁמר “to guard, to keep” has the simple profane sense of “guard” (4:9; 30:31), but it is even more commonly used in legal texts of observing religious commands and duties (17:9; Lev 18:5) and particularly of the Levitical responsibility for guarding the tabernacle from intruders (Num 1:53; 3:7–8). Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 67.

This leads to the question, “Guard against what?” It does seem odd, at first glance, to see a command to “protect” when all is very good Adam is in Paradise. Thus, Kuyper is correct to see the implied danger in the command “to keep.”  Kuyper thinks she must have known of

When a beast appears disrupting the natural order, he should have been recognized immediately as the danger previously warned against. Kuyper asserts Eve did know this was the alien power.

The second issue addressed in this chapter is the counter-factual: What if they had withstood the test? They would have known God better as their king and law giver. Their sin did open up a world of knowledge to them. It was an actual form of knowledge, because God sought to bar them from the Garden by armed Cheribum.

Adam and Eve were deluded in what they obtained: they did not actually raise to the preeminence of determining right and wrong in an absolute sense; merely in a rebellious manner refusing to accept God’s pronouncement.  This disruption of the proper relationship with God has left us poor humans with a bad conscience.  He refers to that status as a “holy sensation to feel shame.”

We are thus left with shame were there was once honor.  It perhaps useful to note at this place that we are promise “honor” at the return of Christ (1 Peter 1:7) and we destined for “glory”. (Rom. 8:30) Such honor and glory will then replace all shame which we now experience.

Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace 1.25

18 Monday Apr 2022

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The previous post on Common Grace may be found here.

In the 25th chapter, Kuyper asks what sort of consciousness did Adam possess? What could it possibly mean to Adam to be told of death & life? How could Adam know what was presented him when he met Eve (or Eve, Adam)?

Kuyper argues that Adam and Eve were possessed of a moral clarity which would escape us at this point: The law of God was not merely an appendage to their knowledge, it was the framework of their understanding.

Moreover, the content of their knowledge would be bracketed with their conscious realization that I was not but now I am. 

Having moral capacity and an understanding of existing or not Adam had the capacity to understand the prohibition to not eat from that Tree. It was an arbitrary command, in the sense that it was not immediately apparent from the natural ordering of the world. To not strike Eve when she came to him would be part of the natural moral order: it is good to not hurt this fellow human being.

But what motivation would then exist to refrain from the Tree. It is not a question of natural law, but a question of positive command: why obey this positive command? Or, as Kuyper puts it, will you obey because it is good, or will you obey because God has so commanded it. The goal was that Adam would obey because of fealty to God.

He provides an analogy: If you give one a command and the other demands an explanation, (what is the purpose of this command, what will be the benefit to me and so on), eventually obedience will not be obedience to command but rather is a decision that I think this is a good idea.

The moral development of Adam was thus to be two-fold: first, there was the development of the delight in good and doing good. Second, this development and delight in good was to be because it was given by God. 

The apparent insignificance of the command, this tree and not some other, had in it the point of the commandment: there could be no motivation for the command beyond God’s authority.

The purpose of the command was to test Adam to see if he would obey because he had been so commanded by God.

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.24, Language

04 Saturday Dec 2021

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The previous post in this series may be found here.

What sort of effect did the tree of “conscience” as Kuyper calls, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Kuyper rules a primarily physical effect because the response of the pair to Adam’s eating was the realization of shame. They were not immediately poisoned by the fruit, but they did immediately have a different understanding of themselves. 

He further notes that it was language which led to their trouble, in that the Serpent tempted them by speaking. 

This raises an interesting question: “what meaning language had for Adam and Eve in paradise.” The way in which the original pair related to language could have been different than the way in which we understand language, because we have more social background and experience for the words we use.

We develop concepts through and with language over the course of time.

For instance, what did “die” mean to someone who had never seen another human being die? And yet, we must not overdo this consideration. The text indicates that God was speaking to Adam and that God understood that Adam would know the meaning of the words.

“In addition, however, the notion that Adam understood language still only imperfectly cannot be reconciled with the rest of the narrative. In the first part of the story, Adam listens more than he speaks, but it is entirely different in the continuation of the narrative. There, with astuteness and nuance Eve argues with Satan, and Satan with her. Then she reasons with Adam.”

Thus, Kuyper concludes, that this capacity to use language effectively must have been something known to Adam and Eve. If they were “wise, holy, and righteous” then they must have had linguistic ability: these aspect require capable thought and thought requires language. 

Kuyper rejects a quasi-evolutionary understanding of language (he calls it a “patchwork”) whereby we point at the same object and make an arbitrary sound which “means” that object. 

Instead, he sees the capacity and use of language as a necessary element in the creation of Adam. The original speech of human beings then later broke into families (particularly after the confusion of language (Gen. 11)). He references the evidence, which had shown remarkable coherence and development of languages. He makes no extended discussion of this point other than saying here is some evidence.

He makes an interesting comparison then to animals which operate by instinct – such as the bee making a honeycomb. But we come to our abilities through development and learning (which would necessitate language). 

Now, if we have the capacity to develop the ability to form and use complex concepts there is no inherent reason that God could not grant to Adam the fully developed capacity at creation (much as Adam was not created an infant who then fared for himself for decades). 

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.23 (the power of choice)

10 Thursday Jun 2021

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Sartre, choosing to look like a philosopher.

“THE BASIS FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT”

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Genesis 3:6

Although created good, with wisdom, holiness, righteousness given God, the human beings in the Garden were yet capable of further development. That development was possible in two different directions: development which takes place in accordance with the instruction given by God, or “development” in contravention of that ordinance. Kuyper explains this in terms of development consistent with the “position of image-bearer” or not. 

To think this through, the instruction of God was to lay out the manner in which the humans would work-out their status and obligation to image God in the creation. This is a different matter than the capacity of the humans to act as image bearer. If we think of image bearer as a sort of mirror, the instruction would be as to how to keep the mirror directed toward God as the original (or conversely to turn away). 

A separate issue would be the functionality of the mirror as a mirror (is the mirror cracked, dirty, cleansed, et cetera).

Kuyper speaks of this functionally as a mirror-original relationship (although he does not use the precise word “mirror”): “Anyone called to resemble another’s image should, in order to keep bearing that image, want to turn toward him. By turning away from him the image is lost.” 

I do not think we have (or can) fully realize the profound effect which takes place to a human being when we – as mirrors (those who are to bear a particular image) – turn away from that which we are to re-present. The Paul, in particular, notes that is by gazing upon Christ that we are conformed to his image (2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10) The change which is wrought in us by this work is the renewing of our mind. (Eph. 4:23; Rom. 12:2)

We were created to exhibit this image, but we can only do so in a dependency relationship. We do not have this image as a matter of sovereignty, but as a creature assigned a position. Kuyper notices something extremely interesting here: The image we are to project is one of sovereignty, but we have that image by derivation of another. We are not inherently sovereign, in the sense that we can exercise some sovereignty in an independent manner. We are certainly not autonomous, a law to ourselves. 

And yet we have to misuse our capacity to dependently exhibit that sovereignty: “. In that contradictory notion of a dependent trait of sovereignty lies the whole mystery of our religious moral being: created in the image of God, consequently possessing the moral choice of our will. This moral choice of will as a trait of the image of God, and therefore dependent.”

In thinking through this moral capacity, Kuyper comes to a concept which was made much of by existential philosophers: the determining nature of our choice: “Sartre’s slogan—“existence precedes essence”—may serve to introduce what is most distinctive of existentialism, namely, the idea that no general, non-formal account of what it means to be human can be given, since that meaning is decided in and through existing itself. Existence is “self-making-in-a-situation” (Fackenheim 1961: 37). Webber (2018: 14) puts the point this way: “Classical existentialism is … the theory that existence precedes essence,” that is, “there is no such thing as human nature” in an Aristotelian sense. A “person does not have an inbuilt set of values that they are inherently structured to pursue. Rather, the values that shape a person’s behavior result from the choices they have made” (2018: 4). In contrast to other entities, whose essential properties are fixed by the kind of entities they are, what is essential to a human being—what makes her who she is—is not fixed by her type but by what she makes of herself, who she becomes.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Existentialism. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

By now means do I see a straight equivalence between Kuyper and Sartre. Rather, I note that they both see an importance in the act of choice (albeit from quite different perspectives and for quite different ends) than is recognized by others: “Everything of God that is reflected in us is so incomparably glorious, but also so fearfully terrible. We make a choice without fully thinking it through and that choice determines our whole existence. And yet, we cannot do otherwise. It must be so.” Sartre would not grant God in the manner voiced by Kuyper, but both would agree that a choice has “terrible” effects. 

Kuyper says that this power is “frightening”. 

Adam created with this “terrible” power of choice could not a creature whose end point was reached at creation. Rather, the placement in the Garden, the receipt of counsel from God, were the bare starting place for his development. It could not have been otherwise when Adam was armed with such an extraordinary moral power: choice.

Kuyper then answers the objection: Why didn’t God just make human beings good – morally perfect without the ability to fall, and in so doing save us the terror of Hell? 

This is the cost of being created in the image of God. Were we created without this power to choose, we have been something else. 

Without this power of choice, we would not be those who preserved. He does not use this analogy, but perhaps it is apt. Imagine to men aged 25 and alive. One man went through a war and lived. The only merely lived. We could not say they were identical. There are aspects of the man who lived through the war which could not exist for the other. They are both alive at 25, but there lives are very different.

And so, God places in the Garden two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (which Kuyper also calls the Tree of Conscience). The Tree of Life will be in Paradise. The Tree of Conscience will not be seen again; it has done its complete work.

How then does this Tree of Conscience produce an effect upon the soul of Adam? It is merely by eating as if the fruit eaten transversed the body and enter the soul directly. The power in the fruit came from the command of God prohibiting the eating coupled to the choice of eating. The Tree of Life need “merely” keep one alive. But the effect of conscience requires something greater than the bare fruit to achieve its end. 

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Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace 1.22, Conscience

23 Friday Apr 2021

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CONSCIENCE AND THE COVENANT OF WORKS

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Gen. 2:16-17

Kuyper begins this chapter with a discussion of conscience. In this opening section he presents two very different concepts of conscience and attributes the modern conscience to be a function of the Enlightenment. 

This discussion of conscience begins with the observation that Adam had no conscience, as we know it. This leads to a discussion of two ways of understanding conscience. In one manner, the newer understanding, conscience is a self-executing faculty which can determine whether a course of conduct is morally appropriate. This faculty as an innate knowledge of what God requires and functions as an “oracle” to our mind.

Functioning in this manner, conscience has an authority independent and over God’s Word. Not raised by Kuyper, but proof of his thesis can be found in the many concessions and transformations of Christian moral behavior and opinion in the world after Kuyper. God’s Word is either rejected or nuanced in such a way as to be meaningless. Any number of examples could be given on the evolution of Christian morality in a number of instances. 

The previous Reformed understanding of conscience before “rationalism was busy trampling faith,”  did not understand conscience as an independent “capacity” but rather as a recurrent reflective mode of thinking. Kuyper identifies three elements of this reflective thought: 

First, it knows the external law of God; the knowledge of good and evil. Second, we have a knowledge of ourselves and our actions. Third, there is a reflexive comparison of our conduct with knowledge of God’s law. He refers to this as a “higher impulse” and pursuant to the impulse we continually reflect on our life in comparison to the law. 

In this respect it then differs from the latter concept of conscience as an independent source of knowledge. 

In this understanding, the conscience is dependent upon the content of the external law which informs and forms the conscience. In looking at some pre-Enlightenment sources, it is possible to see an understanding consistent with Kuyper’s model:

False Rule. 3. Conscience. It is, saith one, my conscience. This is no rule for an upright man; the conscience of a sinner is defiled, Tit. 1:15 conscience being defiled may err; an erring conscience cannot be a rule, Acts 26:9. ‘I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus;’ he who is an heretic may plead conscience; admit conscience to be a rule, and we open the door to all mutinies and massacres; if the devil get into a man’s conscience, whither will he not carry him?

Thomas Watson, “The Upright Man’s Character,” in Discourses on Important and Interesting Subjects, Being the Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; Glasgow: Blackie, Fullarton, & Co.; A. Fullarton & Co., 1829), 328. Here, he explicitly denies the conscience has any independent moral standard, but it is imported – at the very least one without salvation cannot have a properly functioning conscience. 

There are other uses which are ambiguous on this point, such as Manton’s “That true morality and good conscience cannot be had without the faith of the gospel; so that we are not only better provided, but indeed cannot perform such obedience as is acceptable to God without faith in Christ.” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 17 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1874), 429. The trouble for the unbeliever is the inability to pacify the conscience because he cannot live right. This raises the question, why does the unbeliever have any pangs of conscience if he is ignorant of the law?

Thomas Boston goes further and writes: “This moral law is found, 1. In the hearts of all men, as to some remains thereof, Rom. 2:15. There are common notions thereof, such as, That there is a God, and that he is to be worshipped; that we should give every one his due, &c. Conscience has that law with which it accuses for the commission of great crimes, Rom. 1 ult. This internal law appears from those laws which are common in all countries for the preserving of human societies, the encouraging of virtue, and the discouraging of vice. What standard else can they have for these laws but common reason? The design of them is to keep men within the bounds of goodness for mutual commerce.”Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Part 2, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 2 (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1848), 61.

And similarly by another, “but God hath given both light streaming forth from the word, and he hath given the eye of conscience, that by both these men might come assuredly to know that they are called out of darkness unto light.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 389.

In another place we see the conscience being deceived and thus judging wrongly: “Conscience is sometimes deceived through ignorance of what is right, by apprehending a false rule for a true, an error for the will of God: sometimes, through ignorance of the fact, by misapplying a right rule to a wrong action. Conscience, evil informed, takes human traditions and false doctrines, proposed under the show of Divine authority, to be the will of God.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 13.

Edwards occupies an interesting middle position, “Thus natural conscience, if the understanding be properly enlightened, and errors and blinding stupifying prejudices are removed, concurs with the law of God, and is of equal extent with it, and joins its voice with it in every article.” Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, Jun., 1808), 442–443. There is a natural conscience which would conform to the law of God, were it enlightened. 

And Luther held to a view that conscience can know of sin but not condemn the man as a sinner, “Zachman writes of Luther’s negative view of conscience: “The conscience can recognize sins (acts), but it cannot of itself, even under the external revelation of the law, acknowledge the person as sinner (nature). The subjective ability to feel oneself a sinner and to sense the wrath of God on sinners is thus a gift of God, and not an ability of conscience.” Justification is solely God’s work ex nihilo, not out of any preexistent salvific matters including human accretions, the murmuring of conscience, etc.” Dennis Ngien, Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 155–156.

And Calvin, “In like manner, when men have an awareness of divine judgment adjoined to them as a witness which does not let them hide their sins but arraigns them as guilty before the judgment seat—this awareness is called “conscience.” It is a certain mean between God and man, for it does not allow man to suppress within himself what he knows, but pursues him to the point of making him acknowledge his guilt. This is what Paul means when he teaches that conscience testifies to men, while their thoughts accuse or excuse them in God’s judgment [Rom. 2:15–16]. A simple awareness could repose in man, bottled up, as it were. Therefore, this feeling, which draws men to God’s judgment, is like a keeper assigned to man, that watches and observes all his secrets so that nothing may remain buried in darkness. Hence that ancient proverb: conscience is a thousand witnesses.11 By like reasoning, Peter also put “the response11a of a good conscience to God” [1 Peter 3:21] as equivalent to peace of mind, when, convinced of Christ’s grace, we fearlessly present ourselves before God. And when the author of The Letter to the Hebrews states that we “no longer have any consciousness of sin” [Heb. 10:2], he means that we are freed or absolved so that sin can no longer accuse us.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1181–1182.

This brings us on both sides of the Enlightenment. While none of these examples hold the conscience an infallible witness, there is at least a general sense of God’s law.

Oddly, Kuyper’s position in some way is closer to John Locke,  Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book 1, Chapter 2:

“7. Men’s actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their internal principle. For, if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity to the professions of most men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The great principle of morality, “To do as one would be done to,” is more commended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach others, that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule be preserved.

“8. Conscience no proof of any innate moral rule. To which I answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience on work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions; and if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.

“9. Instances of enormities practised without remorse. But I cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts has been the practice; as little condemned or scrupled as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in childbirth; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents, without any remorse at all?”

This is a very preliminary exercise and I have never really thought the issue through before. I without question concur that the conscience can be informed and deformed, and it is certainly no infallible rule. But I don’t think the issue can settled as easily as before and after the Enlightenment. 

Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.21

26 Friday Mar 2021

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The previous post may be found here.

Chapter 21 continues with the consideration of Adam’s original state and the image of God. The first half of the chapter concerns the question of what is meant by Adam’s original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. First, Adam was simply created in a right relationship with God: he was thus righteous. Adam did not need to acquire this right standing, he was created in this place.

Since Adam was in a right standing with God, Adam by nature of the arrangement must possess original holiness. If had any sense been unholy, that right relationship could not exist (“Strive for … holiness without which no one will see God.” Heb. 12:14.) Our current holiness is of a different nature in this life, for our holiness is in a mediator. We are counted righteous in Christ. In the case of Adam, he stood in holiness by nature of his having been created without sin. 

This brings Kuyper to Adam’s wisdom. Here Kuyper looks to 1 Corinthians 1:30 where Christ is our righteousness, our holiness, and our wisdom (the final element in  1:30 is redemption, which would be unnecessary for Adam). 

Although not developed, Kuyper’s implicit argument seems to be that if we must received righteousness, holiness, and wisdom from Christ, then the triad must have been present with Adam (and in some manner lost). 

As to wisdom, he emphasizes that we know – we do not merely feel—the truth. When Satan comes to Eve, he comes to her with deceptive reasons. He compares these to pearls on a string which all must be present together: wisdom, righteousness, holiness. 

This leads to the question of the image of God: If these three make up the image of God, then when Adam fell whence the image? But we if make these things the image, then there is man and the image is something added to him (because we are human beings after the fall, even if we lack the original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom). 

The Roman theologian solve this problem by dividing between the image and likeness: Image is the essence of a man; likeness, an addition of righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. The likeness then acted like a bridal upon the image. 

Kuyper does not find that argument persuasive. Rather, he speaks of the essence of Adam as the image of God in that by essence, Adam was able to reflect God. There is also the actual display of those qualities in Adam.

This capacity to reflect is inherent in all that we are as human beings, including in the fact being physical creatures. We are organically body and soul; death is the grotesque sundering of the two. Our body is the means by which the spiritual reality of reflecting God physically displays. 

But our capacities for thought, memory, appreciation of joy and beauty go beyond being a bare animal, “and can be explained only on the basis of the reflection of the things of God in our human being.”

Human beings thus exist for God and God’s glory. From this, Kuyper argues to immorality: Since we exist for God and not ourselves: to display the glory of God, the individual (and not merely the race) must always exist, lest God lose that glory.

He does not argue the point further, but our continued existence after death in an eternal state fulfills that point. Even those who are lost display his glory in God’s patient endurance of their rebellion, in the display of his wrath. And a point made by Bray, God’s love continuing as such even toward the lost in that he refuses to utterly destroy even the Devil.

Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.20

13 Saturday Mar 2021

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In this chapter, Kuyper considers the issue of original righteousness in Adam when created. To explain man as the image of God, Kuyper uses the language of a mirror (as Lints in Identity and Idolatry). When God created humanity, at the moment of creation, the reflection was there: “In creating man, God makes for himself a mirror in which he wants to see his own image as clearly as the nature of the creaturely makes this possible.” This was not an addition to Adam, but was inherent in Adam.

Here is a critical distinction between the Reformed and Roman positions. The original righteousness of Adam was not a gracious addition to nature.  The importance of this doctrinal distinction was addressed in the previous chapters, here and here. 

Kuyper next contends that the matters of creation can be in a state of maturity: particularly with respect to the formation of Adam. That is, God did not create a baby and then wait 20 years for the baby to be an adult.

Having considered the creation of the body, Kuyper turns to the soul, Adam’s spiritual existence. He makes mention here of the relatively new discipline of psychology as a “soul science” (this volume was originally published in 1902).  He then asks the pointed question, What do we really know about the essence of the soul – beyond what is said in Scripture? We can look at effects, but what is happening there in the soul is a kind of mystery. 

As an aside, it would be difficult to say that we know all that much more than Kuyper. Certainly there have been behavioral observations and untold thousands of college freshman have been duped into disclosing their willingness to lie or their preference for this or that in response to graduate students’ experiments. Yet, what is really happening, what is the essence is still a mystery. 

Thus, as Kuyper says we should be thankful for anything God has told us of ourselves. We know there is a development of sorts. And here he begins to make observations. 

There are elements of our maturation which begin “inside” if you will. There are native abilities, dispositions, and such which mature as the child interacts with his environment and matures. Now Adam’s body was matured, but what of his soul? Was he born with a fully matured soul? To make sense of what we are told of Adam, we must conclude that he a fully matured soul.

This then raises an issue. While I could understand a fully matured body – because the growth of a body comes from the body itself; a fully matured soul is more difficult to understand, because the maturity of the soul comes about through interaction with the environment. Again, Adam must have been fully matured in his intellectual and emotional capacity. 

Then finally what of his religious capacity—and this brings us to the question of original righteousness from a different direction. And here we must contend he was in a state of maturity and holiness. But this is not to say that he was incapable of further growth or maturation. Just as an old scholar can still learn, despite having obtained to righteousness, even so Adam was able to further mature.

And so when we speak of original righteousness, we mean that he not defect of morality nor inclination away from the law of God. He was no double-minded but rather of full accord with his position as a creature before, created for God’s glory, to display God as in a mirror. This is what is meant by “original righteousness.”

“Thus in paradise there was spiritual perfection, though not yet the final consummation, in the three spheres of intellect, morality, and religious life.”

Kuyper, Common Grace.19 (Original Righteousness Continued)

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

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The previous post in this series may be found here.

Kuyper continues on with the issue of original righteousness in Adam: Was righteousness a supernatural addition to human nature? In this chapter Kuyper examines the issue from a different direction: Whence disordered or rebellious desire in human beings?

He presents the contrast between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed understanding of the question. 

The Roman Catholic view (he cites to Bellarmine) explains it thus: The mater which makes up human nature is inherently subject to this defect. To create a human being is to create a being capable of defecting and such defection is an unavoidable consequence of making human beings from matter:

Bellarmine, the skillful Roman Catholic polemicist, who has argued the case for the Roman Catholic side of this doctrine most thoroughly, returns time and again to the point that the temptation to sin lies in the makeup of our nature. Thus he says among other things, “The desire of the flesh is at present a punishment for sin, but for man in his natural state this condition would undoubtedly have been natural, not as a given positive aspect of his nature, but as a deficiency, yes, even as a certain sickness of his nature, that flowed from the constitution of matter.”

If this is so, then there is something matter which is inherently contrary to God. If God could have created a human without this defect inherent in matter, then God could have/should have done so. That God did not create such a human being argues that God could not make such a being and still use matter. There thus must be something ultimately incorrigible in matter.

So, the “fountain of sin” lies in the very fact that we are human beings: which is a deduction Kuyper makes from Bellarmine’s understanding of human nature. Since this “fountain” bubbles up as its own accord, a sinful desire is not sinful. It only become sinful when the will consents to the desire. There must be a second move to turn a desire for sin into a sinful desire. 

He makes the observation that the Reformed and Roman Catholic positions differ not on the doctrine of the Trinity but on the doctrine of humanity. Our anthropologies differ: this is the place where the two diverge. Sin does not have its origin in something inherent in the physical body and the soul, but rather has its source in the spiritual (not the physical). Satan a pure spirt without body introduced humanity to sin. 

Human beings were created with original righteousness, not as a supernatural addition but as something inherent in humanity – but that this original righteousness exists in our dependence – not independence from God. 

Kuyper then draws out an implication from this fact of dependence: Human beings were not created with humanity as the end, the purpose of humanity. Human beings were created for God and God’s purposes. Human beings were specifically created to glorify God; God creates us for His glory. 

There is another corollary which Kuyper draws: If human beings have some purpose other than God’s glory, if there is some purpose, some end which we should/may achieve other than God’s glory, then God becomes an instrument to help us achieve that end. God becomes a tool in our effort to achieve our glory. 

God created Adam in such a way, with excellency and glory, because such an Adam was needful for God’s aim. God did not need Adam, but it did please God to create Adam and to work through Adam and to so sustain Adam by grace. 

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.18 (The Nature of Original Righteousness)

22 Thursday Oct 2020

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In the 18th chapter, Kuyper analyzes the nature of Adam’s original righteousness. He first considers the Roman Catholic position: In Adam’s pre-Fall state, he consisted of body and spirit, horse and rider. The body, the horse, was possessed by original nature of concupiscence: desire was in man by God’s creation:

This tendency, called concupiscence, was not itself sin, but could easily become the occasion and fuel for sin. (But cf. Rom. 7:8; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:5, Auth. Ver.). Man, then, as he was originally constituted, was by nature without positive holiness, but also without sin, though burdened with a tendency which might easily result in sin.

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 209. Thus, to keep man in order God gave the spirit as a rider for the horse. But since this would easily let men fail, God also bestowed a supernatural grace upon man of righteousness. As Charles Hodge explains:

According to their theory, God created man soul and body. These two constituents of his nature are naturally in conflict. To preserve the harmony between them, and the due subjection of the flesh to the spirit, God gave man the supernatural gift of original righteousness. It was this gift that man lost by his fall; so that since the apostasy he is in the state in which Adam was before he was invested with this supernatural endowment. 

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 103. Thus, freedom of choice remained in humanity after the Fall:

But the capacity to choose by one’s free will nevertheless continued in the sinful part of the human spirit, and today free will remains the starting point of moving toward spiritual perfection, if not in the Pelagian sense then at least in the manner of the semi-Pelagians.

Thus, the conflict within the human being is a conflict between desire and reason; and it was by the addition of a supernatural grace that Adam was in a state of original righteousness. 

The Reformed view differs at this point. Original righteousness was part of the original nature of humanity; it was not added by supernatural power. The fall of the Fall was not the loss of supernatural grace but rather corruption. He cites to Lord’s Day question 7 of the Heidelberg Catechism, “hence our nature is become so corrupt.” 

Kuyper insists that it was not the loss of essence but the corruption of nature, the two terms being distinguished:

Essence and nature, so they maintained, must be distinguished. The essence is the abiding, while nature is the changeable, such that sin did change the functioning of the nature of man, but the essence of man has remained what it was, and will remain so, even if it descends forever into the place of damnation. In Satan as well, the essence of the angel remains unchangeably the same; only his nature has, with regard to its function, changed completely into its opposite. The same is equally true of mankind.

As he works through the warrants for these positions, Kuyper first notes that the Roman view implies that man was defective in that he needed an additional to be holy. The second argument is that man in and of himself was defective in this respect then some of a different kind must be added to keep him in line; as if an angel were given to protect him. 

There is an interesting implication of this distinction: is a desire toward something in and of itself. In Roman Catholicism a desire without acquiescence of the will is not sinful – because the capacity for such desire is inherent in the human being. As the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

From the explanation given, it is plain that the opposition between appetite and reason is natural in man, and that, though it be an imperfection, it is not a corruption of human nature. Nor have the inordinate desires (actual concupiscence) or the proneness to them (habitual concupiscence) the nature of sin; for sin, being the free and deliberate transgression of the law of God, can be only in the rational will; though it be true that they are temptations to sin, becoming the stronger and the more frequent the oftener they have been indulged.  

Bavinck explains the development of this position in Scholatisticism:

Scholasticism, furthermore, began gradually to distinguish between primo-primi, secundo-primi, and plane deliberati desires, that is, those thoughts and desires that arise in us spontaneously before any consent of the will and are not at all sinful; those against which the will has offered resistance but by which it has been overpowered and which are venial sins; and those to which the will has consciously and fully consented and which are mortal sins. Added to this was the fact that the conception of original sin was becoming ever weaker and original sin itself viewed as wholly eradicated by baptism. What remained, concupiscence, was itself not sinful but only a “possible incentive to sin.” Rome, accordingly, decreed that the guilt and pollution of original sin was totally removed by baptism, that though concupiscence remained, it does not injure those who do not consent to it and can only be called sin “because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.”

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 142–143. But in Reformed doctrine, the desire itself is sinful; such sinful desires are culpable before God:

The idea that original righteousness was supernaturally added to man’s natural constitution, and that its loss did not detract from human nature, is an un-Scriptural idea, as was pointed out in our discussion of the image of God in man. According to the Bible concupiscence is sin, real sin, and the root of many sinful actions. 

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 236. This had an interesting playout in the Reformed world with the Revoice Conference. You can read about it here.