James Bratt’s following words could summarize one of the goals Abraham Kuyper achieved as a Christian thinker. Kuyper “upgrade[d] Calvinism from an old dogma to an active life, to put Modernist methods to orthodox ends, and to redefine the church to make it fit, and challenge, the contemporary world” (p. 42). I concur. However, how did Kuyper do it in theoretical terms? In trying to answer the former question, I will look to another Bratt’s work on Kuyper.
One of the issues that emerges from the chapters “Modernism” and “Conservatism & Orthodoxy” in James Bratt’s Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader is Kuyper’s (over?)use of his antithesis. The antithesis has to do with the rejection of any neutral position on a specific matter or topic. It is very clear from Kuyper’s early life that Kuyper’s struggles allow him to give faith in his life the importance it deserves. He, for example, defends a kind of social conservatism not based on disparate reasons such as political affiliation or cultural tradition but based on the belief that such a position might be closer to Christianity or finds strong support in it. In other words, Kuyper believes his conservative positions regarding faith “were not enough but required firm doctrinal definition.” (p. 65). This suggests that Kuyper’s antithesis applied to his religious thoughts is reflected in his particular strategy of defending the Christian faith. For him, anti-Christian systems (such as modernism) must be understood as life systems that encompass all human life and not merely a series of positions. As one observes the Kuyperian concept mentioned earlier, it grants Kuyper the tools to consider Christianity and modernism as opposing worldviews.
In this respect, Kuyper believes Christianity in its Calvinist interpretation must be understood as a life system that encompasses all stations or spheres of life – religion, culture, philosophy, science, and so on. With his having in mind the importance of life systems, Kuyper argues that Christianity and conservatism are closer than one might think. Both life systems are based on powerful facts and principles (p. 78). They indeed share guiding principles that allow people to reason in a particular way. Not surprisingly, Kuyper’s fight against modernism placed him above many of his contemporary thinkers: “Kuyper meets Modernism on its own grounds,” writes Bratt (p. 88). In this sense, I believe that perhaps it was his emphasis on the antithesis concept that allowed Kuyper to engage the guiding ideas and thoughts of the modernist life system successfully. It was not merely offering reasons why modernism itself was bad but showing that its guiding principles failed. Engaging, not avoidance, was a key term for Kuyper’s fight against Christian thought. As he correctly states, “I believe that we can no longer avoid the struggle against Modernism (…)You cannot walk away from your own time but must take it as it is, and the times demand that we either accept the unsetting of our faith or enter the fray” (p. 90).
As one might note, the antithesis in Kuyper’s religious thought allowed him to defend his Calvinist system using several cultural arguments and not only religious reasons. Two places where Kuyper believes Modernism fails are in its moral system (p. 112) and its flawed historiography (p. 114). However, the list does not stop there. The Modernist life system has “[n]o real God, no real prayer, no real divine government, the reality of human life under threat, no real sin, no real ideal, no genuine history, no true criticism, no dogma that could withstand scrutiny, not a real church.” (p. 118). As seen, Kuyper’s reasons against Modernism show Kuyper’s engagement with it from a faith-based worldview.
To reflect, I ask the following question: What role did the events of Kuyper’s personal life play in the use of the antithesis in his religious thought? For instance, on the one hand, two of Kuyper’s primary vocations (for example, religious minister vs. journalist-politician) seem to go in opposite directions, almost excluding each other. On the other hand, one appreciates how Kuyper’s career as a journalist and politician opened the door for him to develop further his cultural vision of the Christian life. It is clear to me that Kuyper tried to avoid any dichotomy in such a vision. If the antithesis is valid, then faith must encompass all human life. Kuyper’s mature religious life is not compartmentalized. Rather, faith shaped all that he thinks and does, all the spheres of his life.
*All references are taken from James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).