In 2007, at an ACCS (Association of Classical Christian Schools), George Grant gave a talk on “The Kuyperian Vision of Christ’s Lordship”.

Here is part one of my notes from his talk.

• Hitler vs. Kuyper
• German Historian Otto Klassen spoke of Hitler’s malignant obsessions and his obsessions with nationalism, a peculiar form of socialism, and the occult.
• In addition to these, though, Klassen speaks of his obssession with his enemies, making a serious study of them
• He dismissed FDR as a weakling, Stalin as a madman
• He feared Churchill, but believed Britian was ensnared in foolishness and Churchill would always be marginal
• One man that he feared and obsessed above the rest was Abraham Kuyper from the Netherlands, even though Kuyper was dead 20 years before Hitler invaded his homeland
• Kuyper was a pastor, educator, journalist, theologian
• He also founded the Free University of Amsterdam, established the Daily Standard, was the founder of the first modern Dutch political party, and rose to the place of Prime Minister
• Clearly a remarkable man in various ways
• Klassen finds this Hitlerian obsession with his enemy Kuyper to be peculiar.  He sees it as another madness of Hitler
• Grant suggests that there was wisdom to Hitler’s fear of Kuyper
• Resistance in Holland
• One of the things the Third Reich encountered when it invaded Holland was stiff resistance
• German military commands were a simple walk from the border into Amsterdam, but instead they got 5 days of fierce fighting and 4 long years of stiff resistance
• The Dutch gathered intelligence, had decentralized cells of resistance, acts of sabotage, etc. (most historians agree Dutch resistance was the most fierce of any occupied countries) – The Dutch created nightmares for Hitler
• Dutch underground almost completely the fruit of Kuyper. Not that he set it up or anticipated the situations, instead his vision was far loftier and insidious towards the Nazis
• What Kuyper did is change a culture, the very fabric of the nation
• 6 months into the occupation, Hitler issued a command that every student who graduated out of Kuyper’s school was to be hunted down, arrested, and treated as a Jew
• Kuyper’s Simple Notion
• - When Kuyper emerged as a leader in the 1870′s evangelicals in the Netherlands became a marginalized minority, 10 years later they had 2 mighty journalistic outlets, a political party, an uncompromised church, and their own university
• 10 years after that they formed a confessional coalition that led the nation for the 50 years proceeding WW2
• He was not just influential, he reshaped and reformed every structure of Dutch culture, creating for it a kind of decentralized network of what he called pillars that ultimately caused the nation to fiercly resist an “irresistable” force
• This vision, Kuyper said, was rooted in one simple notion: That Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is not simply a Lord over the religious sphere of life, he is Lord over all – There is not on square inch over teh whole domain of human of human existence, of which Christ, as sovereign over all, does not say: mine!
• He says, my crown rights, my covenant dominion – art, music, literature, ideas, education, economics, home life, street life, commerce, iternational affairs, the way we care for the poor, the way we deal with the oppressors – Jesus Christ is Lord over all of it)
• This unrelenting, uncompromising vision is not unique to Abraham Kuyper – but Kuyper lived that credo with no exceptions, hammered it out with extraordinary ways in a way that changed the shape of his nation
• Grant is asked why post-war Holland seemed to tank so fast?
• Simple: Adolph Hitler.
• he understood the threat and hunted down every leader that Kuyper had trained, every institution he attempted to crush
• the movement didn’t go away entirely, which is why Holland has remained diverse and pluralistic
• But Hitler understood he had a fierce enemy in this man named Abraham Kuyper who had been dead for two decades

• Kuyper’s Personal History: Transformation
• It would behoove us to understand what it was that Kuyper understood & what his philosophy did in the nightmares of Adolph Hitler
• Kuyper wasn’t always God’s renaissance man
• Graduated from school as a typical modernistic intellectual
• influenced by modernism, entered into a pastorate with a spoiled faith
• He took up the pastorate in a church, there he met remarkable people – people who believed the Bible, and who lived like it
• they lived their lives together, in a community
• they were responsible for, and to each other
• It was like stepping through the wardrobe to Narnia
• In this small church, Kuyper was loved out of his obstinate and foolish arrogance, right into the arms of his savior
• As a pastor of this small church, he came to know Christ,  the glories of the gospel, and its power.
• He began a renewed study of the Word of God and began with great fervor to articulate the truths of the Gospel and a comprehensive worldview of Christ’s Lordship
• Kuyper moved a couple times, eventually ending up in Amsterdam, gaining renown as a great orator and intellectual and unflinching advocate of the authority of Jesus Christ
• As you might expect, everywhere the gospel went forth, great collisions occured between controlling modernists and the fledgling evangelical movement.
• This resulted in expulsion from the church, so Kuyper was forced to start from scratch–planting new churches and creating new structures
• Kuyper realized that if Dutch life was going to change, everything was going to have to change.

To be continued…