Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art
Overview
Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art is a new and complete translation of two sections that the Dutch Reformed theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper intended for his larger three-volume work on common grace. During his life, Kuyper labored tirelessly, publishing two newspapers, leading a reform movement out of the state church, founding the Free University of Amsterdam, and serving as prime minister of the Netherlands. Kuyper’s Wisdom & Wonder displays his talents as a public theologian, focusing on his comprehensive and Reformed vision of science and art, still relevant for Christians today.
In the Logos edition, all Scripture passages in Wisdom & Wonder are tagged, appear on mouseover, and link to your favorite Bible translation in your library. With Logos’ advanced features, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, every mention of “creation” or “restoration.”
- Includes an introduction by Vincent E. Bacote
- Provides a brief biography of Abraham Kuyper
- Focuses on Kuyper’s vision of science and art
- Part 1—Science
- Wisdom
- Knowledge
- Understanding
- Sin
- Education
- Part 2—Art
- Wonder
- Beauty
- Glory
- Creativity
- Worship
Top Highlights
“We live in a world that provides us a glimpse of much that is beautiful, but not of beauty in its consummate state. Nevertheless, a homesickness for that consummate beauty dwells within our heart. That heart impulse leads to attempts to conjure up that elevated beauty for eye and ear. From such endeavors art is enlivened.” (Page 144)
“The motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.” (Page 144)
“Beauty is the way it is because God was pleased to make it so. And we have a sense of beauty because God created that sense of beauty within us.” (Page 141)
“On the contrary, according to the tenor of Scripture, beauty belongs to the eternal things, things that perish here in order later to return eternally in a more exalted form, and only then to make the full glorifying of God’s majesty radiate throughout his creation.” (Page 130)
“The world of beauty was thus conceived by God, determined by his decree, called into being by him, and is maintained by him.” (Page 126)
Abraham Kuyper was a profound theologian, an encyclopedic thinker, and a deeply spiritual man who believed that it is the believer’s task ‘to know God in all his works.’ In a day when secular science is seeking to establish hegemony over all knowing, and when postmodern art is threatening to bring an end to art, Kuyper’s solid, biblical insights can help restore perspective and sanity to these two critical areas of human life.
—Chuck Colson, founder, Prison Fellowship and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview
The appearance of this treatise in English translation is for the beginning of a larger dream come true. Kuyper’s writings on common grace are much needed ‘for such a time as this’ and Wisdom & Wonder is a marvelous foretaste of more that is to come!
—Richard J. Mouw, president and professor of Christian philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary
Abraham Kuyper’s Wisdom & Wonder is an eloquent theological antidote to the anti-intellectualist and anti-artistic impulses that infect so much of the contemporary church. Kuyper issues a clarion call for Christians to move beyond Bible study and theology, and beyond church art, to engage in these graced endeavors (science and art) in gratitude to God and out of fidelity to Christian conviction. Though Kuyper wrote these words more than one hundred years ago, they have lost none of their bite and relevance.
—Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University
- Title: Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art
- Author: Abraham Kuyper
- Editors: Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill
- Translator: Nelson D. Kloosterman
- Publisher: Christian’s Library Press
- Publication Date: 2011
- Pages: 182
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905. He founded the Free University in Amsterdam and served as a professor of theology. At the invitation of B. B. Warfield, Kuyper traveled to the United States to deliver the Stone Lectures at Princeton and address Reformed congregations in Michigan and Iowa.
Kuyper studied at the University of Leiden, and received his doctorate there in 1863. He became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1863, and consistently called for the separation of church and state. He also led a secession from the Dutch Reformed Church and united several disparate Reformed churches in the Netherlands.
Kuyper also led an active political life. He served as a member of Parliament in the Netherlands beginning in 1874 and served as prime minister from 1901–1905.
Abraham Kuyper was instrumental in the development of Neocalvinism, and is remembered for his articulation of common grace and for popularizing the notion of a Reformed worldview. He has influenced such notable figures as Francis Schaeffer, Cornelius Van Til, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Chuck Colson.
Some of Kuyper’s publications, which are available in Logos, include Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation, and Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles.