Oldal 10 [10]
solutions, technologies with convictions about the moral guality of society. I am
convinced that more attention will be given to the moral dimension of social
issues. It is essential and inevitable.
At the same time I am convinced that the tradition of Protestantism can
and should be a guiding force in this era of radical changes. The relationship
between God and the human being, the inspiration of Christian values and
their significance for reflection on social developments are instrumental in
building a better society.
Protestantism can be a source of inspiration even in the twenty-first century.
This brings me to the meaning of a man, Dr. Abraham Kuyper, who played
such an important role in Dutch society in the second half of the nineteenth
and the beginning of the twentieth century. Kuyper was a brilliant student in
theology and wrote his DTh thesis when he was a young man. He started as a
minister in the Protestant State Church in the village of Beesd. There he no¬
ticed that ordinary people had an enormous knowledge of the Bible and very
strong convictions. He then really understood the meaning of Calvinism. These
experiences changed his convictions and his whole life. Christian values and
Calvinism became his foundation. He was convinced that God was sovereign in
all domains of life. His deeply-rooted Christian belief was not only a matter of
religious consciousness and theology, but also a fundamental source of inspira¬
tion, both for his developing views on society, and for taking action. He founded
a Christian newspaper, De Standaard, in 1872; the first political party in the
Netherlands, the Anti-Revolutionary Party (against the anti-Christian princi¬
ples of the French Revolution), in 1879; the Free University in Amsterdam (with
a strong focus on Sphere Sovereignty), in 1880; and the Reformed Churches
in the Netherlands in 1892. In 1891 he gave a fundamental speech about the
relationship between the big social issues of those days and the Christian reli¬
gion at the first Christian Social Congress. In 1901 he became Prime Minister.
The central element in Kuyper’s thinking and acting were Christian values
and convictions. He demonstrated this clearly in his famous Stone Lectures
in 1898 at Princeton Seminary in the USA. These lectures were about the sig¬
nificance of Calvinism for philosophy of life, religion, politics, science, art and
the future. Kuyper did show how inspirational and deeply rooted convictions
can be used as constructive means of criticism in both the cases of theology
and of society.
Protestantism, knowledge and the world of science are connected. This book
is not only an analysis of history, it is also a source of inspiration for the future.
That was the real meaning of this conference.
Jan Peter Balkenende