An accidental blog

"If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit." Abraham Kuyper Common Grace 1.1.

Sunday 12 July 2015

Common grace - ecclesiastical suicide?

This lecture from professor David J.Engelsma, professor emeritus of the PRC Seminary, delivered on 26 Sept, 2014 at Sunshine Community Church in Grand Rapids, MI, looks at Kuyper's common grace 'project'. Engelsma is no friend of common grace and his approach is rather polemical.

The immediate occasion for the lecture is the Acton Institute’s translation project of Kuyper’s Common Grace. Engelsma sees common grace as having an important spiritual, social and practical purpose: ie the Christianising of America. Common Grace is a sortie in the culture wars.

In this lecture he is concerned strictly with Kuyper’s common grace as a cultural doctrine and as a teaching that accounts for the doing of good by unbelievers, that calls Christians to unite with Roman Catholics and non-Christians to make America, and the world, Christian.

He maintains that Kuyper taught common grace as the Christianising of the world. He asks is that the Reformed calling or is it ecclesiastical suicide? He asserts that it is ecclesiastical suicide.

Engelsma lecture starts approximately 15 minutes in, after the introduction from Den Hartog.


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