# Abraham Kuyper: Principles of Sacred Theology



## RamistThomist (Sep 18, 2018)

This is an abridgment of his 3 volume _Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid_. While it suffers from the same drawbacks as all abridgments, and this particular edition (I had some cheap knock-off edition, like Associated Publishers of America, or something) suffered even more, it is worth reading for the very serious reader.

It is difficult, though. While I have huge problems with aspects of Kuyper's thought, they don't arise in this volume. In fact, his use of organic metaphors and epistemology is often quite brilliant. 

Argument: theologically science should begin organically because knowledge is inter-related. It is the unbelieving world that can’t integrate knowledge (I:iv). Science: a collected body of knowledge independent from the activity of the knower. It is a “connected form of knowledge.”

If there were no organic relationship between subject and object, “then thinking man in our age would have an entirely different object before him” than in other times (II:1). Kuyper is addressing the old problem regarding the relationship of universals to particulars.

The Christian is determined by a palingenesis, which leads to an enlightening, which changes a man in his very being (50). Kuyper: “This regeneration breaks humanity in two.” Man: man is no spirit but a spiritual being and exists simultaneously psychically and somatically, so that a great deal of his inner life manifests itself without the person being conscious of it (97). (Kuyper rebuts the donum superadditum on pp. 104-105).

Revelation, Humanity, and History: revelation goes out to humanity taken as a whole. Since humanity unfolds itself historically, this Revelation also bears an historic character. Since this humanity exists organically, having a centrum of action, this Revelation also had to be organic, with a centrum of its own (112).

For Hegel and Schleiermacher, man is the archetypal theology and God is the ectypal theology. True being and knowledge is only in man, while knowledge of God is a dim imprint. This is a brilliant summary of modern theology, and ultimately, its man-centered view of God.

_Regeneration and Knowledge, Again_

“Regeneration is not an element in knowing, but in being” (142ff). What I think he is saying is that regeneration penetrates to the whole man. A principium of knowledge is a living agent, and it is from this agent that knowledge flows. As such, obviously, the bible is not an agent. Nevertheless, it is proper to call Scripture the principium unicum theologiae if understand as a plant, “whose germ as sprouted and budded” (143).

Sharpening our antithesis: if Holy Scripture is the principium of theology, then there is an antitheis between this principium and the common principium of our knowledge (153).

Really good section on the relation of natural and special revelation. Rather than two mechanical principles that never really integrate (e.g., as in Protestant and Roman Catholic scholasticism), they “possess a higher unity, are allied to one another, and, by virtue of this unity and relationship, are capable of affecting each other” (157). Their unity is God, as he is the source and object of both kinds of knowledge. 

Muslims isolate the principium of knowing from the principium of being (175). I think Kuyper means is that there is no organic connection between the two. Kuyper mentions a “dictated inspiration” in connection.

But for the Christian, what binds these streams together--the recreative divine energy? Kuyper wants to avoid the idea of “inspiration” as some kind of donum superadditum.

Summary of sub-section: the special principium in God directs itself as the principium of knowledge ot the consciousness of the sinner, bringing about inspiration/illumination. As principium of being, its spiritual and material re-creative acts are called miracles. The world of thought and the world of being do not lie side by side, but are organically connected (178).

On Miracles

Miracles organically recreate the cosmos from within. Away with silly discussions of “violating natural law.” Renewal in Scripture is not a new power or a new state of being, “but simply a new shoot [that] springs from the root of creation itself” (182).

*Conclusion
*
This book could have been 100 pages shorter. That sounds odd, since it is already an abridgment of a 3 volume work! On another note, there are moments where Kuyper (similar to Bavinck) anticipated the dark spiritualism that would break out in the 20th century. He was a century ahead of his time. I fear some conservatives are still 30 years behind him.


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## greenbaggins (Sep 18, 2018)

Jacob, as far as I know, it is not actually an abridgment per se, but volume 2 of the original encyclopedia entire, and a few pages from one of the other volumes.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 18, 2018)

greenbaggins said:


> Jacob, as far as I know, it is not actually an abridgment per se, but volume 2 of the original encyclopedia entire, and a few pages from one of the other volumes.



I did not know that. Thanks.


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