The question of Christian schools is related to our total situation including home, church and society. What we are dealing with is not only directly related with the school but also with the press, popular reading material for farmer folk in their winter meetings, the spreading of the proper knowlege of national history and the general advancement of our people in a Christian-Historical perspective. In short, our concern touches everything that our people feel in their lives at home: it touches our Christian interests that were formerly wasted.

Dr Abraham  Kuyper penned these important words con­cerning the basic relationship between the Christian school struggle and worldview per­spective in De Standaard on October 29, 1878.

This period was a turning point in the decades-long fight to win financial equality for Christian schools with their public counterparts. The Kuyperian constituency got organized and deepened its understanding of the bibli­cal view of life. Yet there was a long struggle ahead. Only in 1917 would the Christian schools achieve complete academic and financial equality with the public school in the constitutional revision of that year.

1878 Petition⤒🔗

During the previous August Kuyper had held a national petition campaign which gar­nered 304,000 signatures. The petition requested King Willem III not to sign into law the Liberal-sponsored primary education bill that still refused to grant financial equality to Christian schools.

When the King rejected the petition and signed the secu­larist school bill into law, Kuyper used the petition net­work to begin forming a national Christian school sys­tem called the "School with the Bible."

In the same newspaper arti­cle Kuyper announced that the new school system was in the process of formation. This school struggle was THE QUESTION of nation­al politics, especially for the Reformed commoners asso­ciated with the Anti-Revolutionary Party. This new organization would be built on the enthusiasm for defending the rights of the Christian schools seen in the People's Petition of the past summer, he emphasized.

The "School with the Bible" affiliates in every locality under national lead­ership would strengthen the influence of the "brothers" on Christian concerns, declared the writer.

But above all, the school issue concerned what Kuyper termed "Christian interests," "reading materials" and "Christian-Historical per­spective." This petition was a "confession of what you believe before men and God," he added.

In reporting in De Standaard (October 3, 1878) on the success in gathering 304,000 signatures for this cause, the editorialist declared, "In the year of our Lord 1878 almost a half of the Protestant population in The Netherlands rejected Voltaire and chose Christ and the Holy Scripture."

Why did Anti‑Revolutionaries feel so nega­tive towards the public school that was trying to be "neutral" towards religious diversity?

A group of eight Anti-Revolutionary law-makers, including future premier Ae. Baron Makay, published a note protesting this Liberal school bill in De Standaard on March 20, 1878. Kuyper was overjoyed with this encouragement. "We deny the neutral theory of educa­tion coming out of the public school. The state does not stay neutral but becomes partisan sometimes out of fear of orthodoxy," began the note.

"This bill is opposed to the Christian part of the nation that dislikes education forced on the nation by public funds. When the free school collapses by force of the Treasury, then the Government and its support­ers will bear full responsibili­ty for a law that prescribes education in all 'Christian virtues' yet in fact does the opposite for Christians," con­cluded the note.

Kuyper and his parliamen­tary co-religionists believed that secular humanism was the religion of the public school. The secularist worldview opposed the orthodox worldview of the AntiRevolutionaries. This basic tension was between belief in God and belief in idols (Acts 17). Furthermore these Christian politicians felt that it would be just for the state to allow parents to take their tax money to sup­port whatever type of school they wanted for their chil­dren.

Perspective←⤒🔗

During the first period of his political career, the AntiRevolutionary leader clearly made the point that

1. education was always related to a basic worldview,

2. it was necessary to make the distinction between Reformed, biblical Christianity and secular humanism on this matter and

3. the Christian worldview was based in part on what he then called the "ordinances of God," and later "common grace."

A deepening of Kuyper's concept of common grace was visible in his lectures at the Free University of Amsterdam during the 1890s and published by his students as "Government: The Locus of the Magistrate" (1910). "After the fall into sin, common grace is the means by which God restrains the destructive power of sin. It makes possible the work of special grace or salvation," he began.

Christian theology is more than just soteriology or the doctrine of salvation. Kuyper felt those evangelicals who saw salvation as the sum total of Christianity were short-changing the fullness of God's work in creation and history. A complete theology includes common grace and special grace (salvation). God carries out His world plan even for the creation by overcoming sin.

There are five parts to common grace.

1. the restraining of Satan and the powers of destruc­tion;

2. the lessening of the sin curse in nature;

3. the retarding of sin in the individual;

4. endowing individuals, families, states and nations with gifts to help humanity; and

5. the preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of Christ in which common grace helps the church.

Kuyper pointed out that Genesis 3-12 teaches much about common grace. For example, Genesis 9: 9-11 established God's covenant of common grace with Noah. After the Flood, this covenant was designed to preserve the lives of people and animals, for example. The creational life cycles of planting and har­vest, human procreation and development are to continue until the end of time.

This covenant does not bring salvation but retards the outworking of sin. The great enemy is still the fallen satanic world which God opposes by His principle of grace. "Sin comes from the human heart," he added, needing God's special grace bringing faith and repen­tance.

The cultural mandate is found in Genesis 9:1 to reproduce and fill the earth with people. Kuyper sees here, for example, the bless­ings of social advancement realized by Columbus discov­ering America in 1492.

The origins of the institu­tion of government are found in Genesis 9:5-6 with the law concerning capital punish­ment for (premeditated) murder. This parallels Romans 13:4 with the law concerning the state's power to use the sword of justice. Kuyper strongly believed that the state is an institution of common grace established after the fall into sin — an important part of his Anti-Revolutionary Program of principles.

Comments←⤒🔗

1. Kuyper made a strong case that the school controversy was related to deeper per­spectives rooted in the human heart (either belief in the God of the Bible or in an idol of secular humanism). For believers this meant that education was based on the study of aspects (subjects) of God's creation to glorify Him and for personal and social growth. As such, Christian education involves applying biblical principles of the Christian worldview to each subject.

2. A salvation-only Christianity does not do full justice to God and His com­prehensive plan for all things. Kuyper helped to restore balance to our perspective by seeing the importance of both common grace and spe­cial grace. Once with much frustration Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, former editor of Christianity Today, told me that in 1973 he had approached Evangelist Billy Graham about heading up a pan-evangelical movement for ethical reform. But Graham turned him down because it might get in the way of his evangelistic campaigns. Henry saw the larger picture while Graham did not.

3. Kuyper's formulation of common grace can be traced from his newspa­per articles in October-November 1873 on the "Ordinances of God" to his great speech at the opening of the Free University in 1880 on "Sphere Sovereignty" to mature state­ments on common grace by the turn of the century. The doctrine of common grace undergirds the entire Kuyperian enterprise. All the good things done and progress made in the world are due to God's common mercies while all the wars and evil deeds are due to our own sin. Only by God's com­mon blessings do we live and only by His special grace can we have faith in Jesus to lead lives of obedience. Surely these divine mercies should bring to us worship and obe­dience to Jesus in all we think and do! We are to serve the Lord in both the church and the world.

4. Those interested in pro­moting the Christian school movement today should real­ize that there is a basic con­nection between education and perspective resting on God's common grace. Rather than reducing this matter to merely a controversial issue, it should help them see that Christian education not based on a Christian world-view is seriously deficient. Kuyper wanted what today would be called a "voucher system" of parental tax dol­lars given to the public or private school of their choice but based on a clear Christian worldview.