22 July 2024

Abraham Kuyper: Inspiration, Revelation, and Scripture

Abstract

This paper examines Kuyper’s view of the Scriptures. It stresses Kuyper’s organic and pneumocentric view of the Scriptures. These emphases serve to show that Scripture is both of divine and human origin.

I. Introduction

It is sometimes forgotten that Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a theologian. He was the first professor of theology at the Free University in Amsterdam and lectured in theology for over 20 years (from 1880-1901). He also wrote and published several volumes that dealt with theological topics, not least his Principles of Scared Theology,[1] The Work of the Holy Spirit,[2] and God’s Angels. In recent years, with the publication of The Collected Works in Public Theology (2015-2022), the emphasis has been on application rather than on Kuyper’s theology. In this article I want to look at Kuyper’s view of inspiration, revelation, and Scripture – with an emphasis on his view of Scripture – in part because Scripture shaped his politics, education, journalism, art, sciences and so forth.[3]

Most of the examinations of Kuyper’s view of the Scriptures have been comparisons with others – Harris with fundamentalism and with Warfield,[4] and Gaffin Jr[5] with Rogers and McKim.

This article will focus primarily on Kuyper’s own view of the Scriptures. Kuyper continually refers to Scripture when discussing topics, so an examination of his approach is important. He continually uses phrases such as these (selected from Honey from the Rock[6]):

Doesn’t all of Scripture show … (1.6)[7]

According to the (Holy) Scriptures … (1.30, 1.48)

Scripture teaches … (1.25)

Holy Scriptures show … (1.29)

Holy Scripture tells us … (1.29; 2.55; 2.59)

That’s why Scripture says… (1.32)

Holy Scripture speaks … (1.55)

Scripture itself says … (1.71)

Scripture requires … (1.98)

… what Scripture wants … (2.17)

Scripture reminds us … (2. 24)

…says Scripture … (2. 34)

Scripture itself teaches … (2.36)

…says the Holy Spirit in Scripture … (2.57)

… on the basis of Scripture … (2. 84)

Holy Scripture says … (2.88)

Scripture itself answers … (2.93)

In the following we shall briefly examine the role of the Holy Spirit, Kuyper’s organic view of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the analogies Kuyper uses for Scripture, but first the notion of the self-authentication of the Scriptures.

II. The Internal Testimony of the Scriptures

In his Work of the Holy Spirit, Kuyper begins by examining what the Scriptures have to say about themselves and looking for any indications of inspiration. The Scriptures are self-attesting. Jesus appears to have credited the Old Testament with inspiration; he considered it to be the Word of God, agreed with Jewish beliefs of the time, and saw it as “one organic whole”. As seen by his repeated use of the phrase “It is written”, Jesus insisted that the Bible cannot be broken and accepted the authority of the Old Testament. This is also apparent in Matt 5:17-18 – every jot and tittle. As Kuyper asserts:

The way Jesus thought about Holy Scripture is the way you should.

What Jesus confessed concerning Scripture, you should.

What Jesus accepted as the sacred charter of truth, you should as well. … You have to stand rock solid in the conviction that “What Jesus says is completely true.[8]

Similarly, in his Principles of Sacred Theology (PST) he stresses the importance of Jesus’ view of the Scriptures. We either agree with his view or see his view as being an error – to take the latter option is to reject Jesus as “the absolute guide along the way of faith” (PST, 459).

III. The Work of the Holy Spirit and Scripture

McGowan observes: “Although evangelicals have spoken about the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to Scripture, there has been insufficient emphasis upon this theme”.[9] This is not the case for Kuyper. He continually stresses the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Scriptures. For example, “That the Bible is the product of the Chief Artist, the Holy Spirit; that He gave it to the Church and that in the Church He uses it as His instrument, can not be over-emphasized” (WotHS, 65). Kuyper poses the question: “How did the Scripture originate?” His answer, “By the Holy Spirit” (WotHS, 171).

The Holy Spirit, is for Kuyper, the “perpetual author”:

… the Holy Spirit, who gave the Scriptures, is Himself the perpetual author (auctor perpetuus) of all appropriation of their contents by and of all application to the individual. It is the Holy Spirit who, by illumination, enables the human consciousness to take up into itself the substance of the Scripture; in the course of ages leads our human consciousness to ever richer insights into its content; and who, while this process continues, imparts to the elect of God, as they reach the years of discretion, that personal application of the Word, which, after the Divine counsel, is both intended and indispensable for them. (PST, 281)

The role of the Holy Spirit is all-embracing, as well as the author of Scripture, he brings illumination and rich insights to the reader. He also is responsible for the Scripture as it is “presented to the church”. The content, selection, and arrangement of the Scriptures are a result of the work of the Holy Spirit (WotHS, 84). The Holy Spirit is the source of inspiration both in the writing of and in the reading of, Scripture.

Hence inspiration is the name of that all-comprehensive operation of the Holy Spirit whereby He has bestowed on the Church a complete and infallible Scripture. We call this operation all-comprehensive, for it was organic, not mechanical. (WotHS, 82-83)

For Kuyper, the Scripture is an instrument of the Holy Spirit in his work upon the human heart and to equip a person for every good work (WotHS, 64). In several places, he describes the Scriptures as an instrument of the Holy Spirit.

That the Bible is the product of the Chief Artist, the Holy Spirit; that He gave it to the Church and that in the Church He uses it as His instrument, can not be over-emphasized. (WotHS, 60)

Without the revelation, the Scriptures cannot fulfil their purpose. Once Christ through the Holy Spirit opens up the Scriptures to us then they cease to be a dead letter but become life giving water:

Consequently the working of Scripture embraces not only the quickening of faith, but also the exercise of faith. Therefore instead of being a dead-letter, unspiritual, mechanically opposing the spiritual life, it is the very fountain of living water, which, being opened, springs up to eternal life. (WotHS, 59)

The Holy Spirit has a threefold operation, according to Kuyper:

First, a divine working giving a revelation to the apostles.
Second, a working called inspiration.
Third, a working, active to-day, creating faith in the Scripture in the heart at first unwilling to believe. (WotHS, 177)

The order is important: revelation comes to, for example, one of the apostles, who records it and writes it down. However, inspiration by the Holy Spirit is required to ensure it is recorded without error. He sees it as a verbal rather than mechanical inspiration. It was not a dictation; rather it is organic, in that it is about “calling forth the words from man’s consciousness”.[10]

The Holy Spirit is the one who brings insight to believers as they read the Scripture. Linked to the work of the Holy Spirit in Scripture are the themes of the authority, necessity, and purpose of the Scripture.

1. The authority of Scripture

The authority of the Scripture comes from the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures. They are not merely a human product. The authority of Scripture has no say in the literary ability of the writers or on the importance of the writers; what is foremost is that they were all equally inspired by the Holy Spirit and that is why their writings are authoritative for then and for today.

Believing in the authority of the New Testament, we must acknowledge the authority of the four evangelists to be perfectly equal. As to the contents, Matthew’s gospel may surpass that of Luke, and John’s may excel the gospel of Mark; but their authority is equally unquestionable. The Epistle to the Romans has higher value than that to Philemon; but their authority is the same. As to their persons, John stood above Mark, and Paul above Jude; but since we depend not upon the authority of their persons, but only upon that of the Holy Spirit, these personal differences are of no account. (WotHS, 172)

The authority of the Scripture means that they are accurate and true; they are reliable. And this is only because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

2. The necessity of written Scripture

A written Scripture was necessary to preserve truth and prevent “degeneration and falsification” (WotHS, 169). The apostles were under the impression of the imminent return of Christ and so had no idea that their writings would become Scriptures. They did not know what they were doing; the Holy Spirit prepared them for their work. The Scriptures were necessary, as they were God’s provision for future generations. As Kuyper puts it:

Hence two things had to be done for the Church of the future: First, the image of Christ must be received from the lips of the apostles and be committed to writing. Secondly, the things of which Jesus had said, “Ye can not bear them now, but the Holy Spirit will declare them unto you,” must be recorded. (WotHS, 169)

3. The purpose of the Scripture

The role of the Scriptures is not to lead us to Christ, but Christ leads us to the Scriptures. He does not see the purpose of the Scriptures as an apologetic tool. The primary emphasis is on Christ not on the Scriptures.

The Scriptures are for all of life. They serve a dual purpose: “First, as an instrument of the Holy Spirit in His work upon a man’s heart. Secondly, to qualify man perfectly and to equip him for every good work” (WotHS, 64). They are not a “mere paper book”:

a lifeless object, but not if we hear God speaking therein directly to the soul. Severed from the divine life, the Scripture is unprofitable, a letter that killeth. But when we realize that it radiates God’s love and mercy in such form as to transform our life and address our consciousness, we see that the supernatural revelation of the life of God must precede the radiation. The revelation of God’s tender mercies must precede their scintillation in the human consciousness. First, the revelation of the mystery of Godliness; then, its radiation in the Sacred Scripture, and thence into the heart of God’s Church, is the natural and ordained way. (WotHS, 65)

4. A predestined Bible

In PST Kuyper draws upon the notion of a predestined Bible. There is no chance or accident in the completion of the Scriptures (PST, 475):

It was not mistakenly, therefore, that a predestined Bible was spoken of in Reformed circles, by which was understood that the preconceived form of the Holy Scripture had been given already from eternity in the counsel of God in which at the same time all events, means and persons, by which that preconceived form would be realized in our actual life, were predestined. (PST, 474)

He recognises the human and divine authorship of the Scripture. He describes this mode of origin as “Inspiration, theopneusty, by the Holy Spirit.”[11] He rejects any rationalistic splitting of the word of God and Scripture. He affirms; “The Scripture is God’s word both as a whole and in its parts.”[12] This means synthetically, in its whole, and analytically, “in each of its parts.”[13] The inspiration is organic rather than mechanical, by “calling forth the words from man’s own consciousness.”

IV. An Organic View of Inspiration

Kuyper uses the term organic, although he does not clearly define it. The term organic has a wide range of meanings. Nowadays, it is used in labels related to food production to denote the absence of pesticides or other artificial chemicals. It is a scientific term used to designate living plants and animals, or as a term to indicate the chemistry of carbon compounds. It can also mean change that happens naturally and gradually without being forced, planned or mechanical. It can also mean a structure or community that fits together well with other parts. It is usually these last two meanings that Kuyper has in mind. Most often he uses it as the opposite of mechanical and to show diversity within unity – “in its whole and in its parts, it is God’s word”.

Kuyper argues that the apostles regarded the Old Testament not as a set of literary documents but as a “codex”, a complete volume. It has an organic unity; it is not an anthology of writings but a whole, “organically constructed and clothed with Divine authority” (PST, 444).

As Kuyper puts it in his rectoral address: “The Scripture is God’s word both as a whole and in its parts”.[14]

The inspiration of the Scriptures is more organic than mechanical inspiration is not mechanical as a stenographer, but organic, impressionistic, and artistic. The Scriptures are works of art and not photographs. As he makes us aware in his Dogmatik Dictaten:[15]

What Jesus said is very important. If one wished to have Jesus’ words with human infallibility, they would all have to be reproduced with the exactness of a stenographer. God has, however, set aside four evangelists for the purpose of reproducing Jesus’ words. God, now, works artistically; the evangelists therefore reproduce infallibly the essence of Jesus’ words, but not always in the same form in which they were spoken”.[16]

The role of the Holy Spirit in inspiration is organic, not mechanical (WotHS, 83). Thus, Kuyper’s main view of the inspiration of the Scriptures is organic and pneumocentric. He also uses several analogies that are linked to these two foci. These analogies include the incarnation; a portrait, not a photograph; and a diamond or jewel. These analogies will be examined below.

V. Analogies for Scripture

For Kuyper, the Scripture is a “divine jewel”, “the Word and the Scripture of … God.”[17] When reading it, it is not Moses or John that addresses him but “the Lord my God.” He waxes lyrical about the Scriptures:

In the midst of that sacred history I hear the Holy Spirit singing to my spiritual ear in the Psalms, which discloses the depths of my own soul; in the prophets I hear him repeat what he whispered in the soul of Israel’s seers; and in which my own soul is refreshed by a perspective which is most inspiring and beautiful. Till at length, in the pages of the New Testament, God himself brings out to me the Expected One, the Desire of the fathers; shows me the place where the manger stood; points out to me the tracks of his footsteps; and on Golgotha lets me see, how the Son of his unique love, for me poor doomed one died the death of the cross. And, finally, it is the same God, the Holy Spirit, who, as it were, reads off to me what he caused to be preached by Jesus’ disciples concerning the riches of that cross, and closes the record of this drama in the Apocalypse with the enchanting Hosanna from the heaven of heavens. Call this, if you will, an almost childish faith, outgrown by your larger wisdom, but I cannot better it.[18]

1. Incarnation

Kuyper sees a parallel between the incarnation and the inscripturation of the Word.

Holy Scripture clothes itself in the garment of our form of thought, and holds itself to our human reality. (PST, 478)

The human authors are seen as secondary to the Holy Spirit who is seen as the primary author. The human author is the “amanuensis of the Holy Spirit” (PST, 480). This implies an organic unity of Scripture – the Holy Spirit unifies the Scripture, through a diversity of authors.

The incarnation analogy carries with it two important aspects of the Scriptures for Kuyper. It is both human and divine, and comes in a servant form.

i. Human and divine authorship

As Jesus in his incarnation was human and divine, so too are the Scriptures. They are divine in origin and human:

Although the Holy Spirit spoke directly to men, human speech and language being no human inventions, yet in writing He employed human agencies. But whether He dictates directly, as in the Revelation of St. John, or governs the writing indirectly, as with historians and evangelists, the result is the same: the product is such in form and content as the Holy Spirit designed, an infallible document for the Church of God. (WotHS, 83-84).

This role of the Holy Spirit in using human authors ensures the organic unity and authority of the Scripture. This organic view of the Scripture and inspiration also rejects the idea that the Holy Spirit dictates the words of Scripture (other than occasionally in the book of Revelation), it also means that human individuality is not stifled in the process of inspiration:

the men employed in this work were consciously or unconsciously so controlled and directed by the Spirit, in all their thinking, selecting, sifting, choice of words, and writing, that their final product, delivered to posterity, possessed a perfect warrant of divine and absolute authority. (WotHS, 84).

ii. Servant form

The Scripture also assumes the role of a servant, just as Jesus did when He came to earth. Kuyper explains how the Scripture displays this trait of a servant:

As the Logos has not appeared in the form of glory, but in the form of a servant, joining himself to the reality of our nature…so also, for the revelation of His Logos, God the Lord accepts our consciousness, our human life as it is…The spoken limitation of our language, disturbed as it is by anomalies. As a product of writing, the Holy Scripture also bears on its forehead the mark of the form of a servant. (PST, 419)

2. A diamond and gold

The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us. So the Word of God apart from the divine life is valueless, unworthy even of the name of Sacred Scripture. It exists only in connection with this divine life, from which it imparts life-giving thoughts to our minds. It is like the fragrance of a flower-bed that refreshes us only when the flowers and our organs of smell correspond. (WotHS, 63 Ch XII)

Here Kuyper in using the analogy of a diamond shows the necessity of revelation in relation to the Scriptures. Without revelation the Scripture is dull and lifeless – as a diamond in the dark – but with the revelation of the Holy Spirit, it brings life and understanding. Likewise, the Scriptures are like gold and like gold there is a need for work to dig out the gold from the ground.

i. Biblical Scholarship

Kuyper observes:

…God’s will lies hidden in the Scriptures, like gold in a mine, and only sustained and comprehensive study, by which we compare Scripture with Scripture, as well as a thorough working out of its meaning in our lives can lead to particular results.[19]

In this Kuyper endorses the importance of, and need for, biblical scholarship. There is a need to dig deep in the mine of Scripture.

At the time when Kuyper was writing on Scripture, Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918)[20] and Kuyper’s fellow Dutchman, Abraham Kuenen (1828-1891), were developing their higher criticism of the Bible. The historical-critical methods were in the ascendency. At one time, while a student at Leiden, Kuyper had become enamoured by L.W.E. Rauwenhoff’s (1828-1889) Enlightenment approach to the Scriptures. Later, particularly after his experience with the “malcontents” at Beesd, he became orthodox in his views and critical of biblical criticism. This is most apparent in his 1881 rectoral address on “The Biblical Criticism of the Present Day.”

There he shows awareness of the dangers but also the place of biblical criticism. He warns:

… the biblical criticism of the present day is destructive of the best interests of the church of the living God, for the reason that it revokes her theology, robs her of the Bible, and destroys her liberty in Christ. … biblical criticism must end in the destruction of theology.[21]

He compares biblical criticism to vivisection.[22] For Kuyper the heart of theology is dogmatics, with exegesis, church history, and pastoral theology clustered around dogmatics – critical-literary studies lie the furthest away. For this reason, biblical criticism, which at Kuyper’s time dealt primarily with these critical-literary studies, focuses on peripherals rather than what is central: “It tears the parts of theology out of their relation, violates its character, and substitutes for it something which is no theology.”[23]

The work of biblical criticism is likened to a regal banquet where “all the threads of the table linens have been numbered, and every spot and scratch on the golden goblets have most carefully been recorded; while, to the mortification of the guests, the sparkling wine is wanting.”[24]

The danger of biblical criticism is then that it tears theology out of its relation, and it falsifies its character.[25] It also, Kuyper argues, robs congregations of their Bible.[26] It should be stressed, however, that, as mentioned above, Kuyper was not opposed to biblical critical studies. On the contrary, he thought it could be done to the glory of God:

Not as though critical and historical examination were prohibited. Such endeavor for the glory of God is highly commendable. (WotHS, 69)

ii. Errors in the Bible?

One important question Kuyper addresses is the nature of possible errors in the Bible. Does inspiration mean that the Scriptures are error-free? The ethicals, a theological school dominant in Kuyper’s time, suggested that there were errors which show that “the Scripture does not pretend to be infallible.”[27] Kuyper refuted this opinion in his “Biblical Criticism” address. He does so for two “decisive reasons”. One, we do not have the original autographs – and so errors may have crept in on what was without original error; two, the witness of the Holy Spirit carries more authority than human judgement:[28]

it is the same primary author (auctor primarius) who, by the apostles, quotes himself, and is therefore entirely justified in repeating his original meaning in application to the case for which the quotation is made, in a somewhat modified form, agreeably to the current translation. (PST, 450)

When the Holy Spirit freely quotes something from an earlier Old Testament verse, he will never make a mistake, even though the exact words may differ, as the original author he is well within his right to express the same meaning in a different form (Scripture is a work of art and not a photograph – see below).

In addition, in WotHS he wrote: “God must condescend to our limitations. … in order to make Himself intelligible to man, God must clothe His thoughts in human language and thus convey them to the human consciousness” (WotHS, 77). This is in line with Calvin’s view of the Scriptures. As Dirk Jellema points out such apparent “errors” “are God’s accommodation to the truth to the limited [human] understanding.”[29]

3. Art, not a photograph

In His Dictaten Dogmatik Kuyper observes the difference between a photograph (a mechanical reproduction) and an artist’s portrait, which provides an impressionistic likeness of the original, it captures hidden meanings. The artist can be seen in and through the piece of art. A photograph may capture a likeness and every hair on a sitter’s head – but the artist works in a different way and the final reproduction is substantially more accurate to reality than the photograph, while not being quite as exact. As he puts it:

Divinely infallible reproduces the essence infallibly, without retaining precisely the same forms (like a painting). Humanly infallible reproduces the form exactly (notariëel), but cannot guarantee the essence (like a photograph).[30]

In the New Testament words have been quoted from the Old Testament. Human infallibility would require a literal reproduction, including even the commas and periods; it would require the kind of copying done by a court reporter or stenographer. Divine infallibility means that the Holy Spirit took over the thought of the Old Testament quotation with freedom and reproduced it in a somewhat different form. These changed quotations do not plead against but for inspiration, since God is an artist and not a photographer.[31]

VI. Evaluation and Conclusion

Kuyper’s view of the Scriptures and inspiration provides a useful alternative to the static, mechanical view of inspiration that is often associated, for example, with the Princeton School of Theology as epitomised by B. B. Warfield and some forms of fundamentalism.[32] Kuyper had an organic view of revelation. By this, he meant that God’s revelation of himself is as one whole. The Bible is not a disconnected set of anthologies[33] – it is a whole. It is one. An important point that is often ignored in fundamentalist proof texting.

Kuyper takes seriously the subjective without resorting to subjectivism, cultural relativism, or historicism. He takes seriously the human role in Scripture both in reading and in the writing of Scripture. Though neither nullifies that it has divine authority.

To the person thus addressed it must seem therefore as though he had been spoken to in the ordinary way. He received the impression that he heard words of human language conveying to him divine thoughts. Hence the divine speaking is always adapted to the capacities of the person addressed. Because in condescension the Lord adapts Himself to every man’s consciousness, His speaking assumes the form peculiar to every man’s condition. What a difference, for instance, between God’s word to Cain and that to Ezekiel! (WotHS, 77)

A crucial point for Kuyper was that we can only know God in so far as he reveals himself to us. He distinguished between archetypa and ectypa forms of knowledge of God.[34] Theologica archetypa is the knowledge of God as he has it in all its infinite fullness; theologica ectypa is the knowledge that is communicated to humanity, which is always mediated knowledge. It is knowledge that is revealed and, as humans are not infinite, has to be accommodated to us – we see through a glass, darkly.

As he argues: “The Scripture reveals ectypal theology mostly in facts, which must be understood; in symbols and types, which must be interpreted” (PST, 568). This archetypa/ectypa distinction can be taken as revealing the influence of the Greek form/matter ground-motive[35] or it can be seen as stressing the importance of the Creator/creature distinction. Unfortunately, at times for Kuyper, it seems to be the former approach and thus shows a scholastic influence upon Kuyper.[36]

As we have seen Kuyper had a high view of Scripture. What marked out his uniqueness at the time was his understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the formation and writing of the Scriptures. His was a pneumocentric view of the Scriptures. Too little attention has been made of this certainly prior to Kuyper.[37]

His was also an organic view of inspiration and thus of the Scriptures. Scriptures are an organic whole and should be read and studied as such. He, unlike fundamentalists, understood the importance of biblical scholarship: biblical criticism was not necessarily bad and it certainly, for Kuyper, did not undermine the authority of Scripture. Scripture’s authority was self-attesting and could not be undermined by naturalistic methods.

Kuyper holds to an organic, pneumocentric view of Scripture. For him Scripture is both truly human and truly divine.[38]

Footnotes

[1] Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1894); it was originally translated as Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, trans. J. Hendrik De Vries (New York: Scribner, 1898); it was later republished as Principles of Sacred Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954, 1968), translating only parts of volume 1, and all of volume 2 of the Encyclopaedie. Volume 3 remains untranslated. Baker republished it in 1980 and an abridged version by Jay P. Green Sr was published in 2001 by Sovereign Grace Publishers. The version used here is the 1968 edition – hereafter PST.

[2] The version used here is the paperback edition of 2001 published by AMG Publishers – henceforth WotHS. The original translation by Henri De Vries was published in 1900 by Funk & Wagnalls. It was reprinted in 1941 by Eerdmans. It was a translation of the three volume Het werk van den Heiligen Geest, Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1888 and 1889.

[3] For an overview of Kuyper see, for example, Steve Bishop, “Abraham Kuyper: Cultural Transformer,” Foundations, 79 (November 2020), 60-76.

[4] Harris, Harriett A., Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and “A Diamond in the Dark,” in L. Lugo (ed.), Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper’s Legacy for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).

[5] Gaffin Jr., Richard B., God’s Word in Servant-Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck on Scripture (Jackson: Reformed Academic Press, 2008).

[6] Abraham Kuyper, Honey from the Rock (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018) – henceforth Honey.

[7] The numbers indicate volume then section.

[8] Kuyper, Honey, 386-388.

[9] A.T.B. Gowan, “The Divine Spiration of Scripture,” SBET, 21(1)(2007), 199-217.

[10] Abraham Kuyper, “The Biblical criticism of the present day,” Bibliotheca Sacra, LXI (1904), 409-442; 666-668. This was a rectoral address given in 1881 at the VU Amsterdam. It was later translated by Rev. J.H. De Vries for publication in Bibliotheca Sacra.

[11] Kuyper, “Biblical criticism,” 425.

[12] Ibid., 430.

[13] Ibid., 430-431.

[14] Ibid., 430.

[15] These were student notes from the dogmatic lectures that Kuyper gave at the Free University, Amsterdam.

[16] A. Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek van Dr. A. Kuyper. II. Locus de Sacra Scriptura, 92.

[17] Kuyper, “Biblical criticism,” 422.

[18] Ibid., 423.

[19] A. Kuyper, Common Grace (Volume 3): God’s Gifts for a Fallen World (Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology) (Bellingham, MA: Lexham Press, 2020), Ch27 §3.

[20] Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis of the Old Testament split the source of the Old Testament into four different sources labelled J, E, D, and P. His main works developing this were published in 1878 onwards.

[21] Kuyper, “Biblical Criticism,” 410.

[22] Ibid., 413.

[23] Ibid., 410.

[24] Ibid., 412.

[25] Ibid., 415.

[26] Ibid., 422.

[27] Ibid., 471.

[28] Ibid., 471.

[29] Dirk W. Jellema, “God’s ‘Baby-Talk’: Calvin and the ‘Errors’ in the Bible,” The Reformed Journal 30(4)(1980), 25.

[30] Kuyper, Locus de Sacra Scriptura, II, 91.

[31] Ibid., 91.

[32] Although, some have overemphasised the differences between Kuyper and Warfield. They both held to a high view of inspiration. They differed on the mode and foundation of inspiration. Harris provides a good description of one of the main differences between Kuyper and Warfield: “In their respective theological battles it is safe to say that Warfield’s polemic was fundamentally against subjectivism while Kuyper’s was against a belief in human autonomy – although this is to impose terminology upon them”. Harriett A. Harris, “A Diamond in the Dark,” in L. Lugo (ed.) 2000. Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper’s Legacy for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 127.

[33] Geerhardus Van Der Leeuw, The Bible as a Book (St Catherines, Ont: Paideia Press, 1978).

[34] This distinction can be found in the Reformed Scholastics Franciscus Junius (1545-1602) and Francois Turretin (1623-1687) among others. See, for example, Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology Topic 1, Second question, VI. Scotus also made a distinction between our knowledge of God (theologia nostra) and God’s self-knowledge (theologia in se).

[35] “The form-matter motive is the fundamental motive of Greek thought and culture. It originates, according to [Herman] Dooyeweerd, from a meeting of two conflicting views the pre-Homeric natural religion – corresponding to the pole of matter – and the Olympian gods’ cultural religion – corresponding to the pole of form”. Steve Bishop, “Herman Dooyeweerd’s Christian Philosophy,” Foundations, 82 (Spring, 2022), 66.

[36] The term scholastic has often been used as a pejorative term. Unfortunately, it has a range of connotations: “Scholasticism is so much a many-sided phenomenon that, in spite of intensive research, scholars still differ considerably in their definition of the term and in the emphases that they place on individual aspects of the phenomenon” (Britannica art. “Scholasticism”). In one sense it is an approach or method that is based on Aristotle’s logical writings – hence the Greek influences.

[37] Kuyper’s Work of the Holy Spirit (WotHS) was the first major work on the Holy Spirit possibly since John Owen’s. In his preface to this work Kuyper remarks: “This meager bibliography shows what scant systematic treatment is accorded to the Person of the Holy Spirit. Studies of the Work of the Spirit are still more scanty”, xiv.

[38] My thanks to Renato Coletto for helpful comments on a previous draft.