Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (Library of Religious Biography | LRB)
Edición digital Logos
Overview
This is the first full-scale English-language biography of the highly influential and astonishingly multifaceted Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920)—theologian, minister, politician, newspaper editor, educational innovator, Calvinist reformer, and prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.
James Bratt is the ideal scholar to tell the story of Kuyper’s remarkable life and work. He expertly traces the origin and development of Kuyper’s signature concepts—common grace, Christian worldview, sphere sovereignty, Christian engagement with contemporary culture—in the dynamic context of his life’s story.
Based on voluminous primary and secondary Dutch sources, Bratt’s Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat will prove to be the go-to biography of this major figure whose ideas and influence extend far beyond his own time and place.
In the Logos edition, this volume is enhanced by amazing functionality. Important terms link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a wealth of other resources in your digital library. Perform powerful searches to find exactly what you’re looking for. Take the discussion with you using tablet and mobile apps. With Logos Bible Software, the most efficient and comprehensive research tools are in one place, so you get the most out of your study.
Get similar titles with the Abraham Kuyper Studies Collection (6 vols.).
- Presents the first full-scale English-language biography of Abraham Kuyper
- Traces the origin and development of Kuyper’s signature concepts
- Heritage and Youth
- Education
- The Young Pastor
- The Young Politician
- Brighton and Breakdown
- Organizer
- Political Theorist
- Church Reformer
- Theologian of the Church
- Theologian of Culture
- Christian Democrat
- Culture Critic
- Kuyper in America
- Life and Death at the End of the Nineteenth Century
- The Peak of Power
- The Peoples of God
- The Dilemmas of Christian Democracy
- The End of the World
Top Highlights
“But perhaps Kuyper’s greatest significance for our own religiously and culturally fractured world is the way he proposed for religious believers to bring the full weight of their convictions into public life while fully respecting the rights of others in a pluralistic society under a constitutional government.” (Page xiii)
“It was precisely the doctrine of election, he insisted, that both mandated and empowered Christians’ public engagement, and that warranted democracy as the political order of modern life.” (Page xx)
“His was first of all a modern project. Born (1837) at a low point in Dutch national fortunes, Kuyper began his career in the 1860s as modernization in the Netherlands gained real momentum: rapid, integrated transportation and communications systems, urbanization and the rudiments of industrialization, religious disestablishment, mandatory elementary education, increased prestige for the sciences and secular outlooks in higher education, and the rise of elected assemblies over hereditary monarchy in politics.” (Pages xiv–xv)
“‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’ ’” (Page xx)
“He made something big of that combination by claiming a relevance for religion across the whole spectrum of public life—not ‘church and state’ narrowly defined, but religion and politics, religion and culture, religion and society. For Kuyper, Calvinism was a world religion, indeed a world-formative one, and his titanic energies, deployed across many fields over a very long career, were devoted to fashioning fresh, authentic ways of making religion work in the modern world.” (Page xiv)
At last! This is what many of us have been waiting for—a careful, detailed, and highly readable(!) biography of Kuyper in all of his human complexity. Jim Bratt has given us the comprehensive study of ‘Father Abraham’ that will serve English speakers for years to come.
—Richard J. Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary
Abraham Kuyper was such a titanic figure in the Netherlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, such a volcano of prodigious energy and imagination in so many areas of life, that I have long assumed that his genius would elude capture by any biographer. James Bratt’s biography, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, proves that I was mistaken. This is Kuyper—not always likable, but always astounding. And it’s a page-turner besides.
—Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology Divinity School and Religious Studies, Yale University
James Bratt has written what can only be called the definitive biography of Abraham Kuyper. With engrossing scholarship and style, Bratt provides indispensable reading for anyone interested in postindustrial Christian social thought. . . . Will undoubtedly become a classic.
—Anthony B. Bradley, associate professor of theology, The King’s College
- Title: Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat
- Author: James D. Bratt
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2013
- Pages: 499
- Christian Group: Reformed
- Resource Type: Biographies
- Topic: Historical Theology
About James D. Bratt
James D. Bratt is professor of history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.