Kuyper's Common Grace 'Christianizing of Culture'—Reformed Calling or

A public lecture, "Kuyper's Common Grace 'Christianizing of Culture'—Reformed Calling or Ecclesiastical Suicide?" will be given at Sunshine Christian Reformed Church on the East Beltline in Grand Rapids, MI on September 26, 2014 sponsored by Southwest Protestant Reformed Church.

The speaker will be David J. Engelsma, professor of theology in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America. 

The occasion for the lecture is the significant project of the translation into English for the first time of the noted Dutch theologian and statesman, Abraham Kuyper's, influential work, Common Grace (originally three volumes in Dutch).  The first volume of the translation has just appeared with the title, Common Grace: Noah - Adam, intro.  Richard J. Mouw, tr. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, ed. Jordan J. Ballot and Stephen J. Grabill (Grand Rapids: CLP Academic, 2013). 

This publishing venture is mainly the cooperative effort of conservative Reformed theologians and the Roman Catholic organization, the Acton Institute.  Involved are also Kuyper College, Calvin College, Dordt College, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Mid-America Reformed Seminary.

The purpose of the publication in English of Kuyper's work on common grace is the "Christianizing" of the increasingly depraved culture of the United States, as of the West generally. The possibility and power of such a "Christianizing" of the culture are supposed to be a common grace of God, shared not only by conservative Reformed believers and Roman Catholics, but also by decent unbelievers.

The lecture will examine the present project of "Christianizing" the culture by a common grace of God in light of Scripture, the Christian creeds, and the history of Kuyper's common grace project in his own Netherlands.

The occasion of the lecture indicates the interest it ought to have for all Reformed Christians and for members of the Roman Catholic Church. The topic itself—the relation of the Christian to the increasingly corrupt way of life in the United States, not excluding Western Michigan—ought to be of vital concern to every man, woman, and child who confess themselves disciples of Jesus Christ in a wicked world.

September 26, 2014 at 7:30  PM

Sunshine Community Church
3300 East Beltline NE
Grand Rapids, MI   49525

Sponsored by:

Southwest Protestant Reformed Church