The fifth post in a series drawing from and interacting with Richard Mouw's Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans, 2011). Today there is a fundamental error occurring in the way we think about the Church. We confuse and collapse two concepts into one, leading us down a dangerous path. These concepts are the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of Christ. “Kuyper makes much of the fact that the Kingdom of Christ is much bigger than the institutional church.” (Mouw, 57) When we hold that the … [Read more...] about Kuyper on The Role of the Church
sovereignty of God
Introducing Kuyper’s “Sphere Sovereignty”
The fourth post in a series introducing the thought of Abraham Kuyper. The series draws from and interacts with Richard Mouw's Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans, 2011). Kuyper's love of multiplicity and unity ran deep. He thought it was the bedrock of creation, as shown previously. We discussed what not to do with diversity and unity and now it falls on us to examine what the proper use of the two realities is. Kuyper's answer lays in a key concept that is not fully developed, that … [Read more...] about Introducing Kuyper’s “Sphere Sovereignty”
The Lure of Abraham Kuyper
Why Kuyper? Richard Mouw's Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans, 2011), in part, seeks to answer that question. Kuyper, according to Mouw, asked many of the questions that should be central for the Reformed church. The questions that motivated much of Kuyper's thinking about how Christians are to serve the Lord in the broad reaches of culture [are] How are we to understand God's intentions in creating the world and - in response to the human rebellion that thwarted God's creating purposes - in … [Read more...] about The Lure of Abraham Kuyper
On Transitions (Part 1)
As I sit to write, friends of ours from Boston are a few miles from our home, having stopped for a brief visit with us en route to their new town. They are in the middle of a major transition for their family; after sixteen years in Massachusetts, they are moving on to plant a church in Texas. Two hours after their arrival in Pittsburgh, they had to get back on the road. As they pulled away, the heartache set in. My four-year-old son verbalized what we were all feeling, “Why do they have to leave? I want … [Read more...] about On Transitions (Part 1)