Tag: Abraham Kuyper

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Abraham Kuyper on the State’s Submission to God

“This right is possessed by God, and by Him alone.
No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately becomes, the right of the strongest.”
“Nor can a group of men, by contract, from their own right, compel you to obey a fellow-man . . .”
“Authority over men cannot arise from men. Just as little from a majority over against a minority, for history shows, almost on every page, that very often the minority was right. And thus to the first Calvinistic thesis that sin alone has necessitated the institution of governments, this second and no less momentous thesis is added that: all authority of governments on earth, originates from the Sovereignty of God alone.”
Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism: Six Lectures Delivered in the Theological Seminary at Princeton (New York; Chicago; Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1899), 103-104.
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Is Conservatism Enough?

Michael Horton asks some questions through Abraham Kuyper that are apropos for Christian Church folk as well. We need to learn to value tradition and beware of traditionalism:

From the late Jaroslav Pelikan:

“Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”

Reformed or Just Conservative?

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