Page "Jacob Klapwijk" Paragraph 2

Another task that Klapwijk took upon himself was to analyze and evaluate differences between the university's two leading lights, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, both now long deceased but both with partisan followers who could live less with the leaders ' differences than could those leaders themselves.

One of Klapwijk's first attempts to articulate this critical stance for his philosophical community occurred in a widely-read volume edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, reviewed in Theology Today, by Eugene Osterhaven: " An excellent chapter on ' Rationality in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist Tradition ' by Jacob Klapwijk ... treats Abraham Kuyper's doctrines of common grace, and the antithesis, and his failure to harmonize the two, especially when he dealt with human reason.

Kuyper's attempts to give the antithesis organizational form is shown to " lead to a dangerous identification of the Christian ( or, if you will, Reformed ) cause with God's cause " ( p. 97 ).

Although Kuyper intended Christian organizations to be a means for Christianizing society, ' the danger was that they were considered not as deficient instruments but as ends in the struggle for the kingdom of God '.