Topic
What I have tried to demonstrate is that the principle of unbelief — the sovereignty of Reason and the sovereignty of the People — while it proclaims Liberty, must end in either radicalism or despotism: in the disintegra…
The Revolution, with its variety of schools of thought and its successive historical manifestations, is the consequence, the application, the unfolding of unbelief.
The Reformation cannot possibly have been the cause of the Revolution, since it sprang from an antithetical principle: from objective unity of faith rather than diversity of subjective opinions; from the infallibility of…
The Reformation wants to be free from Tradition whenever it contradicts the Bible, free from human command whenever it conflicts with the divine commandments. It desires prayerful searching of the Scriptures, not in orde…
All power is of God. A civil power is God's lieutenant and God's minister. In this duality of the relation—its twofold direction, upwards and downwards—lies the whole theory of divine right. We are to obey the higher pow…
Centralization always begins by destroying the rights of provinces and municipalities and, if forced to be consistent, ends by tolerating in fact no right or activity or existence except under its supervision and control…
The Revolution doctrine is unbelief applied to politics. A life and death struggle is raging between the Gospel and this practical atheism. To contemplate a rapprochement between the two would be nonsense.
By Revolution I do not mean one of the many events whereby a government is overthrown. Nor do I just mean by it the storm of upheaval that has raged in France. Rather, by Revolution I mean the whole inversion of the gene…
With the reality of revelation, therefore, Christianity stands or falls.
The true religion which shall satisfy our mind and heart, our conscience and our will, must be one that does not shut us up in, but lifts us up high above, the world; in the midst of time It must impart to us eternity; i…
Between the freedom of the Christian man, on behalf of which Luther entered the lists, and the liberty, equality, fraternity, which the Revolution inscribed on its banner, the difference is fundamental. Luther and Voltai…
If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, abov…
Therefore in opposition both to the atheistic popular-sovereignty of the Encyclopedians, and the pantheistic state-sovereignty of German philosophers, the Calvinist maintains the Sovereignty of God, as the source of all…
A religion confined to the closet, the cell, or the church, therefore, Calvin abhors. With the Psalmist, he calls upon heaven and earth, he calls upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God.
This dominating principle was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but, in the widest sense cosmologically, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and…
In this independent character a special higher authority is of necessity involved and this highest authority we intentionally call – sovereignty in the individual social spheres, in order that it may be sharply and decid…
In a Calvinistic sense we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life f…
Either this second coming, therefore, is near at hand, and what we are witnessing are the death-throes of humanity; or a rejuvenation is still in store for us; but if so, that rejuvenation can come only through the old a…
But this light did not arise through evolution; it shone from the Cross of Calvary.
Calvinism did not stop at a church-order, but expanded in a life system, and did not exhaust its energy in a dogmatical construction, but created a life- and world-view, and such a one as was, and still is, able to fit i…
I keep my eyes fixed upon the Beautiful and the Sublime in its eternal significance, and upon art as one of the richest gifts of God to mankind.
Thus you recognize that the cosmos, instead of being a heap of stones, loosely thrown together, on the contrary presents to our mind a monumental building erected in a severely consistent style.
To receive as the highest reward a University of the Sciences in a moment, when, in a fearful struggle, the course of the history of the world was turned by your heroism is only conceivable among a people in whose very l…
There is found hidden in Calvinism an impulse, an inclination, an incentive, to scientific investigation.
Yea, even as a grain of wheat from the sarcophagi of the Pharaohs, when again committed to the soil, bears fruit a hundredfold, so Calvinism still carries in itself a wondrous power for the future of the nations.
Calvinism has yet a blessing to bring and a bright hope to unveil for the future.
Consequently, it is impossible for a Calvinist to confine religion to a single group, or to some circles among men. Religion concerns the whole of our human race.
Nature about us may have lost the glory of paradise by reason of sin, and the earth may bear thorns and thistles so that we can eat our bread only in the sweat of our brow; notwithstanding all this the chief aim of all h…
And for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover th…
So Calvinism was bound to find its utterance in the democratic interpretation of life; to proclaim the liberty of nations; and not to rest until both politically and socially every man, simply because he is man, should b…
Calvinism, as the only decisive, lawful, and consistent defence for Protestant nations against encroaching, and overwhelming Modernism,—this of itself was bound to be my theme.
When thus taken, I found and confessed, and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Calvinism. In Calvinism my heart has found rest.
Two life systems are wrestling with one another, in mortal combat. Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself from the data of nature; while, on the othe…
It is a symptom of spiritual poverty if the church of Christ is afraid to address the burning problems of the day — every burning problem, after all, and above all the social problem of the working classes, arises from d…
Much less may believers retreat to their ecclesiastical corner and, satisfied with simply having faith, abandon the building of the temple of science to unbelievers, as though science does not concern them.
What is it to be rich toward God? To understand this, imagine for a moment everything you call yours in the world as taken from you. Picture yourself abandoned and forgotten of all, in utter isolation alone with your own…
Alas, (and now I come to the second part of my address) we have disrupted this beautiful order. By our guilt the earthly fatherland is no longer oriented toward the heavenly but stands constantly in opposition to it. And…
And so God's children will receive more than paradise, because all division and separation of the peoples will come to an end in that better fatherland. What existed before the flood, what the sinners intended by buildin…
Islam isolates God from the Creature, in order to avoid all commingling with the creature.
If Christianity is to be presented as the hope of the future, then it must be presented to men as a total life and world view.
If the believer's God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer's hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.
This 'regeneration' breaks humanity in two, and repeals the unity of the human consciousness' [The result is] an abyss in the universal human consciousness across which no bridge can be built.
Sin, indeed, is an absolute darkening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and about man; but common grace has restrained its workings to a very conside…
Now then even the unbeliever can be of service to us as in Christ we re-undertake the original mandate given to Adam. We see now that history is a coherent process with the Cross as its center, a process in which every n…
Faith gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness it rests immediately on the testimony of God; but without this support, everything that announces itself as faith is merely a weaker form of opinion based on…
Conversely, our duty is that we who confess Jesus Christ take hold of science as an instrument for propagating our faith-conviction.
A person endowed with faith gradually will accept Scripture; if not so endowed he will never accept it, though he should be flooded with apologetics. Surely it is our duty to assist seeking souls, to explain or remove di…
The Christian Religion and Paganism do not stand related to each other as the higher and lower forms of development of the same thing; but the Christian religion is the highest form of development natural theology was ca…
50 quotes
What I have tried to demonstrate is that the principle of unbelief — the sovereignty of Reason and the sovereignty of the People — while it proclaims Liberty, must end in either radicalism or despotism: in the disintegra…
The Revolution, with its variety of schools of thought and its successive historical manifestations, is the consequence, the application, the unfolding of unbelief.
The Reformation cannot possibly have been the cause of the Revolution, since it sprang from an antithetical principle: from objective unity of faith rather than diversity of subjective opinions; from the infallibility of…
The Reformation wants to be free from Tradition whenever it contradicts the Bible, free from human command whenever it conflicts with the divine commandments. It desires prayerful searching of the Scriptures, not in orde…
All power is of God. A civil power is God's lieutenant and God's minister. In this duality of the relation—its twofold direction, upwards and downwards—lies the whole theory of divine right. We are to obey the higher pow…
Centralization always begins by destroying the rights of provinces and municipalities and, if forced to be consistent, ends by tolerating in fact no right or activity or existence except under its supervision and control…
The Revolution doctrine is unbelief applied to politics. A life and death struggle is raging between the Gospel and this practical atheism. To contemplate a rapprochement between the two would be nonsense.
By Revolution I do not mean one of the many events whereby a government is overthrown. Nor do I just mean by it the storm of upheaval that has raged in France. Rather, by Revolution I mean the whole inversion of the gene…
With the reality of revelation, therefore, Christianity stands or falls.
The true religion which shall satisfy our mind and heart, our conscience and our will, must be one that does not shut us up in, but lifts us up high above, the world; in the midst of time It must impart to us eternity; i…
Between the freedom of the Christian man, on behalf of which Luther entered the lists, and the liberty, equality, fraternity, which the Revolution inscribed on its banner, the difference is fundamental. Luther and Voltai…
If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of Nature around us, but, abov…
Therefore in opposition both to the atheistic popular-sovereignty of the Encyclopedians, and the pantheistic state-sovereignty of German philosophers, the Calvinist maintains the Sovereignty of God, as the source of all…
A religion confined to the closet, the cell, or the church, therefore, Calvin abhors. With the Psalmist, he calls upon heaven and earth, he calls upon all peoples and nations to give glory to God.
This dominating principle was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but, in the widest sense cosmologically, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and…
In this independent character a special higher authority is of necessity involved and this highest authority we intentionally call – sovereignty in the individual social spheres, in order that it may be sharply and decid…
In a Calvinistic sense we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life f…
Either this second coming, therefore, is near at hand, and what we are witnessing are the death-throes of humanity; or a rejuvenation is still in store for us; but if so, that rejuvenation can come only through the old a…
But this light did not arise through evolution; it shone from the Cross of Calvary.
Calvinism did not stop at a church-order, but expanded in a life system, and did not exhaust its energy in a dogmatical construction, but created a life- and world-view, and such a one as was, and still is, able to fit i…
I keep my eyes fixed upon the Beautiful and the Sublime in its eternal significance, and upon art as one of the richest gifts of God to mankind.
Thus you recognize that the cosmos, instead of being a heap of stones, loosely thrown together, on the contrary presents to our mind a monumental building erected in a severely consistent style.
To receive as the highest reward a University of the Sciences in a moment, when, in a fearful struggle, the course of the history of the world was turned by your heroism is only conceivable among a people in whose very l…
There is found hidden in Calvinism an impulse, an inclination, an incentive, to scientific investigation.
Yea, even as a grain of wheat from the sarcophagi of the Pharaohs, when again committed to the soil, bears fruit a hundredfold, so Calvinism still carries in itself a wondrous power for the future of the nations.
Calvinism has yet a blessing to bring and a bright hope to unveil for the future.
Consequently, it is impossible for a Calvinist to confine religion to a single group, or to some circles among men. Religion concerns the whole of our human race.
Nature about us may have lost the glory of paradise by reason of sin, and the earth may bear thorns and thistles so that we can eat our bread only in the sweat of our brow; notwithstanding all this the chief aim of all h…
And for our relation to the world: the recognition that in the whole world the curse is restrained by grace, that the life of the world is to be honored in its independence, and that we must, in every domain, discover th…
So Calvinism was bound to find its utterance in the democratic interpretation of life; to proclaim the liberty of nations; and not to rest until both politically and socially every man, simply because he is man, should b…
Calvinism, as the only decisive, lawful, and consistent defence for Protestant nations against encroaching, and overwhelming Modernism,—this of itself was bound to be my theme.
When thus taken, I found and confessed, and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Calvinism. In Calvinism my heart has found rest.
Two life systems are wrestling with one another, in mortal combat. Modernism is bound to build a world of its own from the data of the natural man, and to construct man himself from the data of nature; while, on the othe…
It is a symptom of spiritual poverty if the church of Christ is afraid to address the burning problems of the day — every burning problem, after all, and above all the social problem of the working classes, arises from d…
Much less may believers retreat to their ecclesiastical corner and, satisfied with simply having faith, abandon the building of the temple of science to unbelievers, as though science does not concern them.
What is it to be rich toward God? To understand this, imagine for a moment everything you call yours in the world as taken from you. Picture yourself abandoned and forgotten of all, in utter isolation alone with your own…
Alas, (and now I come to the second part of my address) we have disrupted this beautiful order. By our guilt the earthly fatherland is no longer oriented toward the heavenly but stands constantly in opposition to it. And…
And so God's children will receive more than paradise, because all division and separation of the peoples will come to an end in that better fatherland. What existed before the flood, what the sinners intended by buildin…
Islam isolates God from the Creature, in order to avoid all commingling with the creature.
If Christianity is to be presented as the hope of the future, then it must be presented to men as a total life and world view.
If the believer's God is at work in this world, then in this world the believer's hand must take hold of the plow, and the name of the Lord must be glorified in that activity as well.
This 'regeneration' breaks humanity in two, and repeals the unity of the human consciousness' [The result is] an abyss in the universal human consciousness across which no bridge can be built.
Sin, indeed, is an absolute darkening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and about man; but common grace has restrained its workings to a very conside…
Now then even the unbeliever can be of service to us as in Christ we re-undertake the original mandate given to Adam. We see now that history is a coherent process with the Cross as its center, a process in which every n…
Faith gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness it rests immediately on the testimony of God; but without this support, everything that announces itself as faith is merely a weaker form of opinion based on…
Conversely, our duty is that we who confess Jesus Christ take hold of science as an instrument for propagating our faith-conviction.
A person endowed with faith gradually will accept Scripture; if not so endowed he will never accept it, though he should be flooded with apologetics. Surely it is our duty to assist seeking souls, to explain or remove di…
The Christian Religion and Paganism do not stand related to each other as the higher and lower forms of development of the same thing; but the Christian religion is the highest form of development natural theology was ca…