1

Abraham Kuyper and the Rise of Neo-Calvinism in the Netherlands Author(s): Justus
M. van der Kroef Source: Church History, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec., 1948), pp. 316-334

Few men in modern Dutch history have played such a significant role as Abraham
Kuyper. A theologian of European renown, a church reformer whose activities
lastingly changed the existing church order in his country, a statesman who during
five decades of an active political career combined his religion with a unique theory
of government, and last but not least, a journalist and outstanding man of letters,
Kuyper, during the course of his long life, placed a stamp upon the civilization of the
Netherlands which it never was to lose. The immense breadth of his intellect,
sustained by a tremendous energy, al- lowed him to speak with authority on
subjects ranging from Calvin's concept of grace, through Islamic architecture, to the
future of colonial reform, and earned him the epithet of Abraham de Geweldige
(Abraham the Magnificent). His greatest achievement, however, was the foundation
of a system of religious dogma upon which he erected a political and social
philosophy which in the Protestant Netherlands since 1850 was the only one of lasting
influence. 316

Influences
As a student of theology at the University of Leyden, he became deeply influenced by
the modernist currents in the theology of that day, stemming from the higher
criticism of the Bible; he whole-heartedly embraced the teachings of the famed
Dutch theologians, Kuenen, Opzoomer, Scholten, and Pierson, who reflected the
views of the German theologians, Schleiermacher, Semler, and Baur, the latter leader
of the Tiibingen school.
Modernism
In his doctoral dissertation on the difference in the concepts of church organization
between Calvin and the Polish reformer John a Lasco, but little love for orthodox
Calvinism; instead, he gave utterance to his sympathy for the more liberal concepts
of the Pole. "For years I have entertained these illusions of modernism,"

The propelling force of the Reveil was Willem Bilderdijk, poet and scholar, whom
Kuyper came to admire fervently." After the Napoleonic tornado had passed over
Europe, Bilder- dijk noticed that the Dutch government, now a monarchy, pass- ed
to the ranks of the third-rate powers. Intensely nationalistic, Bilderdijk envisaged
the return of greatness and glory to the Netherlands, on the basis of a constitutional
government, strongly conservative in character, which stood opposed to the
extreme democracy and the doctrine of popular sovereignty stemming from the
French Revolution.
2
Groen van Prinsterer, lacking the mystical speculative nature of da Costa,
transformed the spiritual aspects of the Reveil into a philosophical theory of govern-
ment which, basing itself on Bilderdijk's ideas, opposed the revolutionary
individualism of the French Revolution, insisted on the historical development of
the Dutch nation as the major criterion in the future determination of Dutch
government, and regarded Calvinism not only the wellspring of civilization in the
Netherlands but also as the great unifying factor that had bound the Dutch together
through the centuries. As such, common worship of the Divine Lawgiver, the
transcendent position of God as absolute sovereign in heaven and on earth the
only alternative to the chaos of French revolution

the Reveil
brought the antithesis between modernism and orthodoxy into the open.
The movement became the ideological vanguard of those increasingly dissatisfied
with modern- ism not only in theology and religion but in civilization as a whole. As
the culmination of the movement stood Abraham Kuyper, de man der antithese (the
man of antithesis). 320

Kuyper and Groen broke with all fellow-travelers in the Reveil, and out of the
confessionals the Anti-Revolutionary Party was born in 1871, dominated by the
"triumvirate, Keuch- enius, Otterloo, and Kuyper.

the Vrije Universiteit, (a university founded in 1880 in Amsterdam by Kuyper to
provide theological training for the ministry in the Dutch Reformed Church on
orthodox Calvinist principles) to the ministry of the Church


Doleantiae

1886 all the suspended churches constituted themselves as De Doleerende Kerk.
(The Suffering Church). A new church had been founded which, though it lost all
claims to its former property, was able to preserve all its other rights and held its
services chiefly under the direction of the graduates of the Vrije Uni- versiteit of
Amsterdam. Some 200 communities with more than 170,000 members had thus
followed Kuyper along the road of the neo-Calvinist reform. But the Doleantie lasted
only six years. Kuyper and his followers stood close to another dissent- ing church
group, the Christian Reformed Church, which as early as 1834 had separated itself
from the main body of the Dutch Reformed Church. The expected event did not take
long in coming: in 1893 chiefly through Kuyper's work, De Doleer- ende Kerk joined
with the Christian Reformed group the Reformed Church of the Netherlands was
founded.

The revolution was justified, wrote Kuyper, as so many Protestant revo- lutions
were: the insurrection of the Dutch against Spain and the "Glorious Revolution" of
1688

3
- his colonial policy, to insist on the judicial and religious equality of such
natives in the East and West Indies who were under Dutch control
- Furthermore, his program in politics, like his religious beliefs, never
degenerated into a reactionary conservatism.
- His religion and the political theory emanating from it was orthodox
Calvinistic, to be sure, based on Calvin's Institutio, the Heidelberg Catechism,
and the decisions of the Synod of Dordrecht but with the influence of the
Reveil. 326


Kuypers political theory
- the Calvinistic doctrine of the unlimited sovereignty of God in this world and
the next
- opposition against tyranny exercised by a man or a group of men and against
popular sovereignty
- This does not mean that man does not possess certain rights; it rather
indicates equality of all men before the Heavenly Ruler, and that the
authority on earth merely reflects the will of God, as understood in the
orthodox Calvinist tradition.
- Calvinism - a guarantor of basic human liberties, since history shows that the
rise of Calvinism was responsible for the struggle of freedom of the Dutch
against Catholic Spain, for the insurrection of the English against the Stuarts,
and for the early love of freedom in the American colonies as part of the
Puritans
- Like Bilderdijk and Groen van Prinsterer, he stands opposed to "the gilded
tyranny and party-despotism"- the consequence of the French Revolution.
- Kuyper is not opposed to a revolution per se, but is against the undue
usurpation of power and sovereignty which a revolution brings in its wake.
Revolutions should not be brought about by a number of individuals, but by
the nation as a whole, led by responsible leaders of the government.

- Kuyper is at one with Calvin's view- if a nation is oppressed by its rightful
ruler, - is entitled to offer only passive resistance but only until such times
arrive that a restoration of previous conditions can be made. Such a
restoration is not a revolution, according to Kuyper, since it finds its origins
in the desire to return to a previous stability which had been upset by the
arbitrary policies of the tyrant who, again in the Calvinist tradition, is to be
held responsible for his actions 329

- In the words of Hendrikus Colijn, one of Kuyper's ablest followers: "Our
resistance is directed against the basic principle of the French Revolution:
Nie Dieu , nie Maitre

. Kuyper consciously directed his propaganda barrage in his newspapers
towards de kleine luiden (the small folk, i.e. the lower bourgeoisie). This
4
element in the Dutch nation, the most conservative-and the most religious-
was as late as 1880 still largely disfranchised.



Abraham Kuyper, J. Gresham Machen, and the Dynamics of
Reformed Anti-Modernism Author(s): James D. Bratt Source:
The Journal of Presbyterian History (1997-), Vol. 75, No. 4
(WINTER 1997), pp. 247- 258

Kuyper was quick to seize upon his era's new possibilities in communication and
organization. His newspaper and political party were among the very first mass-
based organizations in the Netherlands, and he relied on an expanding franchise in
church and state to keep his movement rising
. 252

Kuyper's works contain more tnan an echo of these themes. His aversion to
ecclesiastical hierarchy left him with an abiding love for the local congregation and a
quasi voluntarist conception of its bond with broader bodies.

He championed separation of church and state as the bulwark of consti tutional
liberty. And he drew sharp theoretical distinctions between many of the same terms
as did Machen: natural-supernatural, common grace-special grace, etc. But dis
tinctions are not the same as dualisms, and Kuyper's whole career went into fighting
the world-flight tendencies that a natural-grace

Though Kuyper was a professional theologian and contended for biblical infal libility
on plenty of other occasions, this piece contained neither Bible nor dogma so much
as arguments from human religious experience and proof-texts from great literature
(Shakespeare, Goethe, Buerger), rendering judgment upon Modernism from its own
courts of appeal. 256 Ill


Abraham Kuyper's Attack on Liberalism
Author(s): Dirk Jellema Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 19,
No. 4 (Oct., 1957), pp. 472-485
LIBERAL CONTEXT
The Netherlands in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was hardly eager to
hear such a message. This was the hey-day of Liberalism, which was beginning to
dominate all areas of thought and action. Liberal philosophy, liberal economic
theory, liberal political theory, liberal educational theory, liberal theology-these
5
were the things which attracted the younger generation, and which even the most
reactionary conservative admitted to be the wave of the future. In politics, the noted
Liberal leader Jan Rudolf Thorbecke (1798-1872) had established the principle of
parlia- mentary rule under a constitutional and limited monarchy, and parliament
(States-General) was controlled more and more clearly by Liberals. 473



opposition to "Revolutionary atomism and uniformity"
was developed and systematized by the historian Groen Van Prinsterer (1801-
1876). Groen had been strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, and also by Karl Von
Haller (1763-1854) and F. J. Stahl (1802-1861). Groen saw the basis for political and
social life not in the individual but in social groups such as the family and the old
guilds, and he attacked the rising Liberal bourgeoisie as a "new aristocracy" which
would be worse than the old.

Groen led a small "Antirevolutionary" group in the Second Chamber (Lower House)
of the States-General. Though he was one of the few able to debate on equal terms
with Thorbecke, he had little political power. Support for the Antirevolutionaries
came largely from some of the Calvinist peasants, who were not enfranchised.
Kuyper had read Groen's works, and been im-pressed by their outlook. In 1869 the
aging Groen met Kuper and adopted him into the party.

Kuyper's social thought
- tends more towards syndicalism or Guild Socialism than it does towards a
hierarchically organized corporative state.
- Society is not arranged vertically but horizontally.
- The state's task is to protect the social spheres. This may, of course, mean
extensive state intervention in certain cases, notably when a social sphere is
too weak to exercise its true sovereignty; then the state must help it become
strong.
- Each sphere has its own specific sovereignty which it must not go beyond; if
it attempts to, the state must intervene.
- The areas of sovereignty of each sphere can be worked out from God's
revelation, and depend ultimately on the various aspects of the human
personality. 483
- The right to control the course of society belongs to the social spheres. This
means that the most basic of these spheres, the family, should have the vote.
Kuyper demanded universal family suffrage in the 1870's, long before the
Liberals or Socialists agitated for suffrage extension.
- He was, by most definitions, Christian Democratic. He always thought of
himself as such. "Christian Democrat-that is the title of honor for every true
Calvinist," he said; and "I have always been, and hope to die as, a Christian
Democrat."


6
Conservatism in the Netherlands Author(s): Hermann von der
Dunk Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 13, No. 4, A
Century of Conservatism (Oct., 1978), pp. 741-763
In this century not a single political party has expressly called itself or its
programme conservative. In contrast to Britain, for example, this term is evidently
not regarded as simply an indication of a particular current in politics, but in itself
considered a priori dishonourable or objectionable. When it is reported that such a
leading Dutch party politician as the Catholic Nolens declared in the Second
Chamber of Parliament in 1918 that people would rather be accused of arson or
theft than of conservatism 741

POLITICAL CONSERVATISM

-OPPOSITIONAL

Broadly speaking, political conservatism meant a huge protest not only against the
revolution but also against the doctrine of natural rights, the idea of the sovereignty
of the people and the whole closely related conception of man and history.

-against rationalism and the belief in progress, abstract moralistic thought, which
did not acknowledge the seminal importance of tradition and history, but intended
to reform the world on the basis of natural law.
-In opposition to all this, the conservatives taught that man was a weak and sinful
creature and therefore imperfect. Government as such emanates from God and the
entire philosophy of equality and liberty, from which liberalism sprang, is
objectionable, because it ignores both the nature of man and the divine law.
It was men like Burke, de Maistre, de Bonald, Adam Muller, von Haller, who - in
reaction to the Enlightenment and the Revolution - accorded significance to this
conservatism

Klaus Epstein- three types of Conservative

1. The pure Reactionary or Restoration- Conservative, who regards some past
social order as normative and wishes to restore it. De Maistre, with his
idealization of French Absolutism and Catholicism, can be regarded as an
exponent of a reactionary ideology. The reactionary might even - in practice
become a revolutionary who violently seeks to re-establish a different earlier
form of society because he repudiates the present socio- political order.

2. The Status Quo Conservative- who accepts the existing order but opposes all
further change.

3. The Reform Conservative is at once aware of the impossibility of stagnation
and of the endeavours to prevent change. Through timely and moderate
7
reforms he wishes to forestall revolutionary changes entailing a break with
the past. He strives for continuity and for a development which will take
place within the framework of tradition. It was Burke who, in his Reflections
on the Revolution in France, attacked the abstract thinking of the
revolutionaries.

Two characteristics, - dominant in conservative thought throughout the
entire century:

1. The rejection of liberalism- the whole liberal-rationalistic image of man;
2. The tie with a feudal-agrarian and pre-bourgeois social structure, which
was regarded as natural and right. 743


- the Netherlands presents a peculiar deviation, which she probably has in
common only with the USA. The feudal-aristocratic past - everywhere else
the source of inspiration of political conservatism - was lacking.

Against this background it becomes clearer why European conservatism found it more
difficult to strike root in the Netherlands, in the absence of a long-established
aristocratic-feudal tradition.

Duth-True conservatism in the Netherlands
-(the powerful counter- movement directed on principle against liberalism), - not a
feudal aristocratic but a Christian- Calvinist character.

-The Gospel and the Bible were set against the revolution.
in the Netherlands the emphasis came, as a matter of course, to be laid more on 'the
altar' - that is to say, the Church and Christian doctrine - because here 'the crown'
had been traditionally absent.

The House of Orange, on the other hand, served as a substitute for a true dynasty
and it assumed a central role in the thought of Dutch conservatives. This was made
easier by the fact that, in the former Republic, the House of Orange drew its sup-
port precisely from the lower Calvinist social classes in the province of Holland."
Orange plus Calvinism versus the libertarian and, in many respects, pre-liberal
Holland regent class . . . it was a con- figuration to which these new conservatives
were able to revert quite naturally. In all this the Catholics, though tolerated, were
distrusted; they were clearly treated as second-class citizens 746

THE REVEIL

- The first ideologically anti-revolutionary and anti-liberal movement was now
formed by the Reveil, the Dutch-Calvinist variant of the European religious revival,
which emerged in the 1820s and 1830s in the wake of Romanticism, following the
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars
8
not a political party- but a group of intellectuals centring round the aged Willem
Bilderdijk, poet, essayist and scholar.

-The principal figure of the movement was the poet and essayist, Isaac De Costa, a
Jew converted to Protestantism, who in his book Bezwaren tegen de geest dezer
eeuw [Objections to the spirit of our time] (1823) put forward a of an anti-
revolutionary manifesto, which is comparable to de Maistre's Du Pape of 1819 - a
kind of Calvinist counterpart.

The Reveil had remained limited to a very small circle


the Constitution of 1848, when the floodgates opened to the influence of the liberal
bourgeoisie.

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
-(on whose thinking the Reveil movement had exercised a formative influence) who
tried in the decades after the great liberal breakthrough to transform the pure
spiritual-cultural conservatism of the Reveil group into political conservatism.

- the Netherlands was, above all, a Protestant nation, 'the New Israel'; a view in
accordance with the ideas of orthodox Calvinism which had played such a
prominent role in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.'
- The essence of his political philosophy, indeed his very national legitimacy,
resided for Groen in that Protestant character which was being disavowed
under the influence of liberalism and modernity.
- The Gospel - in Calvinist terms - ought to become the guiding principle of a
national policy for the country and of the whole social system. 748
- - saw the House of Orange rather as the divinely-appointed protectors of a
democratic people.
- As early as 1847, Groen had outlined his ideas in Ongeloof en Revolutie
[Unbelief and Revolution]. He and his adherents, who wished to transform
the liberal state into a Protestant-Christian state, now called themselves anti-
Revolutionaries.

Kuyper

-Groen's loose anti-revolutionary grouping was therefore remoulded by his
successor, the clergyman Abraham Kuyper, into a vigorous, active anti-
revolutionary party able to launch the ideological onslaught on liberalism on a
broad political front.

Kuyper's thinking - naturally strongly shaped by Groen and the Reveil - exhibits,
besides the evangelical anti-revolutionary character, other traits typical of
European conservatism elsewhere: a highly organic concept of society, antipathy
9
towards a centralized bureaucratic state, and a preference for a federalist
structure.
-Kuyper opposed individual franchise and emphasized organic franchise;
-he was also thinking along the lines of a more corporatist social order. 6
- a highly developed social conscience which inspired his interest in social
measures initiated by the State, a feature found among more reformist
conservatives in other countries. 750

-a democrat- favoring the expansion of the electorate

Religion and Political Development in Nineteenth-Century Holland
Author(s): James W. Skillen and Stanley W. Carlson-
Thies Source: Publius, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), pp. 43-64

Christian Democracy - two special characteristics of the Dutch brand

1. Solid, stable character;
2. Protestant origin.

Michael P. Fogarty, Christian Democracy in Western Europe: 1820-1953 (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p.
-"except in Holland, the beginnings of Christian Democracy in 1820-1880 were
essentially Catholic." 44
the Dutch peculiarity - politics was, and still is, viewed by many Protestants and
Catholics as a dimension of religious life, but not as something ecclesiastical, not as
something limited to church or specifically theological issues.
Hans Daalder- "Parties and Politics in
- Dutch Christians insist "that politics is not something separate and purely temporal but
something to be subordinated to eternal values. Religious parties, they claim, are natural
and rightful parties, and any political differences there may be should be settled by
discussion and compromise within religious positions."
the Christian political parties that emerged in the nineteenth century were truly and
independently political, with fully developed political theories, platforms, and programs
covering the whole range of the government's domestic and international responsibilities
44

10
The Christian communities, beginning with the Protestant Calvinists, came to view all
areas of modern life as fields for their Christian (though not necessarily church) action.

Johannes Althusius (1557-1638).
The most important Calvinist political thinker of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, who influenced and was influenced by the Low Countries
Althusius developed influential interpretations of both "community" and "federalism." As
a critic of Jean Bodin, Althusius understood "sovereignty" as a characteristic of the
political community rather than as an attribute of the political ruler.
Also, in contrast to Bodin and others, who were seeking a new doctrine for the rising new
states Althusius believed that the largest political units should be federated bodies
dependent on smaller political and nonpolitical associations.
-His political theory could more properly be called "convenantal pluralism."
- basic conviction was that God created human beings as communal creatures who need
the friendship, communication, and love of one another. 46
- Each association has its own character and needs which are provided for by the unique
"laws" established by the members of each association.
Later Dutch Calvinists look back at Althusius's work as the groundwork for an
interpretation of the plurality of life spheres that were beginning to differentiate in
modern Europe.

Holland - the end of the eighteenth century.
1. A strong central government was imposed by the French after 1795.-That imposi-
tion of central control was new to the Dutch, and it raised a whole range of
questions about the scope of government, to say nothing of questions about
"national identity."
2. A religious revival- Reveil, swept across Europe and found firm roots in Dutch
soil. Many of the common people as well as aristocrats, scholars, and poets were
awakened to some of the spiritual sources of Dutch life which had been discarded
by modern rationalism.1
3. Enlightenment-rooted liberalism was just beginning its fight for "progress."

The interaction of these three new trends produced a thorough re- placement of the
older, territorial bases for political disputes with new religious and philosophical
ones. Centralization demoted the provinces from their previous dominance, thus
11
providing a new focus and location for political dispute.
The growing dominance of the liberal movement

The Congress of Vienna placed Belgium under Dutch control, a union which lasted
for about twenty years.
During this ill-fated union and after Belgian independence in 1839, the Netherlands
was organized as a unitary state under a monarchy, thus continuing the centralization
initiated by the French.
The first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by the liberal- conservative
controversy, with a liberal victory coming at midcentury. 48
Under the leadership of the great liberal, J.R. Thorbecke, direct elections for the
lower house along with ministerial (cabinet) responsibility were constitutionalized in
1848.
G. Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876),
-secretary to the king and archivist of the Royal House of Orange.
-Groen had become a Christian during the course of the Reveil.
-In studying Dutch history he became convinced that modern liberalism, rationalism,
and revolutionism were diametrically opposed to the Calvinism, which he believed
had been so important in the founding of the United Provinces.
This aristocrat was the first to call for the formation of a mass political party in the
Netherlands.
In Groen's most famous book, Ongeloof en Revolutie (Unbelief and Revolution),-
Christians to the task of reforming political life on the basis of Christian principles in
place of the revolutionary principles of the Enlightenment.
His work stands at the foundation of the oldest formal political party in Holland-the
Antirevolutionary Party. His slogans were: "There has been written" (in the Bible),
and "There has happened" (in history led by God)
-The first principle of Enlightenment philosophy, said Groen, was the sovereignty of
reason.
Reason became the touchstone of truth, and even the Bible was brought under rational
examination to judge whether or not anything "worthy" was contained in it. ?.. For
the Christian this is already a violation of God's rights; it is the aspiration to deify
man through the denial of God. 50
12
Groen earned the title, "The General without an Army."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)- carried the program forward with remarkable
genius.
Within a score of years he organized (or helped to organize) a militant daily
newspaper (1872); an Anti-School Law League (1872) consciously modeled on the
British Anti-Corn Law League; a massive petition movement against a new Liberal
School Bill (1878) which obtained over 300,000 signatures at a time when the
electorate was only a little over a third of this figure; a political party, the Anti-
Revolutionary Party (1879), which proclaimed resistance against the world of 1789
and pioneered modern mass-party organiza- tion techniques in the Netherlands; an
independent Calvinist University (1880) which provided the new movement with its
future intelligencsia and finally with an independent church

The principled mass political parties
- organized in the latter part of the last century to contest liberal hegemony were not,
by and large, seeking to substitute new Catholic, socialist, or Calvinist hegemonies.
They were seeking for their subcultures full participation in the public realm, a
chance to cooperate in the shaping of societal development, and an opportunity to
contest publicly the views and proposals of other groupings.
The religion of the Antirevolutionaries- Pluralism-Rejection of Homogeneity
- quite in line with the "principled pluralist" convictions of Abraham Kuyper,
has not been apolitical religion seeking opportunity to drive underground the
expression of other faiths and the imposition of imposition of cultural homogeneity.
Both Calvinists and Catholics have agreed that others must also have the same
freedom.
The political power of the sword will never be able to compel a common religious
conviction, even in public life; and so, they argue, no attempt in that direction is
supportable. The diversity of views ought to be respected and protected, not merely
tolerated, if the government cannot mobilize enough power to coerce into being a
homogeneous political culture.