God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper “business” and needs its own unique pattern of authority. When we confuse spheres, by violating the proper boundaries of church and state, for instance, or reducing the academic life to a business enterprise, we transgress the patterns that God has set.
– Abraham Kuyper
Creation | Authority
It is not your idea, not your understanding, not your thinking, not your reasoning, not even your profession of faith, that here can quench the thirst. The home-sickness goes out after God Himself… it is not the name of God but God Himself whom your soul desires and cannot do without.
– Abraham Kuyper
God
Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.
– Abraham Kuyper
Christianity
When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.
– Abraham Kuyper
Obedience
He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.
– Abraham Kuyper
Friendship
It is not your idea, not your understanding, not your thinking, not your reasoning, not even your profession of faith, that here can quench the thirst. The home-sickness goes out after God Himself… it is not the name of God but God Himself whom your soul desires and cannot do without.
– Abraham Kuyper
God
Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.
– Abraham Kuyper
Faith
Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand – in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science – he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.
– Abraham Kuyper
Life
Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.
– Abraham Kuyper
Christianity
We can exert power for good, therefore, only if we are prepared to drum it into our heads that the church of Christ can never exert influence on civil society directly, only indirectly.
– Abraham Kuyper
Examples | Government
God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper “business” and needs its own unique pattern of authority. When we confuse spheres, by violating the proper boundaries of church and state, for instance, or reducing the academic life to a business enterprise, we transgress the patterns that God has set.
– Abraham Kuyper
Creation | Authority
The “book of nature” must always be read in light of God’s special revelation, the Bible.
– Abraham Kuyper
The Bible
When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.
– Abraham Kuyper
Obedience
The seminaries must be like the churches’ poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity.
– Abraham Kuyper
Education
The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.
– Abraham Kuyper
Service
The seminaries must be like the churches’ poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity.
– Abraham Kuyper
Education
He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.
– Abraham Kuyper
Friendship
Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand – in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science – he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.
– Abraham Kuyper
Life
In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’
– Abraham Kuyper
Christ
Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.
– Abraham Kuyper
Faith
We can exert power for good, therefore, only if we are prepared to drum it into our heads that the church of Christ can never exert influence on civil society directly, only indirectly.
– Abraham Kuyper
Examples | Government
In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’
– Abraham Kuyper
Christ
The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.
– Abraham Kuyper
Service
The “book of nature” must always be read in light of God’s special revelation, the Bible.
– Abraham Kuyper
The Bible