On each God has conferred its own peculiar right of existence and reason for existence.”

Kuyper’s convictions on this subject led him to a very personal decision at one point in his career. He had started off his life as a leader as an ordained Dutch Reformed minister. But when he became active in politics, seeking election in the Dutch parliament, he gave up his ordination. From that point on he was a member of the laity. This

In the three-part mandate of Genesis 1:28, the first thing God tells them is to “be fruitful and multiply.” That is about reproduction. He wants them to procreate, to have children. But when the Lord immediately goes on to tell them to “fill the earth,” that is a different assignment. This “filling” mandate, as viewed by Kuyper and others in the

Sphere sovereignty” is the English term used for Kuyper’s Dutch phrase (soevereiniteit in eigen kring). The Dutch here is a little difficult to translate literally, but it has the sense of each sphere having its own unique or separate character. Each cultural sphere has its own place in God’s plan for the creation, and each is directly under the

sphere sovereignty

Kuyper meant, among other things, to counter the idea that such entities as the state or the family or the market system exist only because the state grants them the right to exist. Governments do not grant these rights; they are called to recognize rights. We have families and churches and economic systems because they are grounded in creation

Many-ness, Kuyper argued, was necessary for created life to flourish in a “fresh and vigorous” manner.

Christ has swept away the dust with which man’s sinful limitations had covered up this world-order, and has made it glitter again in its original brilliancy.… [T]he world-order remains just what it was from the beginning. It lays full claim, not only to the believer (as though less were required from the unbeliever), but to every human being and to

Enlightenment thought saw human reason—or more generally, an enlightened human consciousness—as the highest standard in the universe for deciding issues of truth and goodness.