Recently, the Acton Institute announced a partnership with Kuyper College to translate Abraham Kuyper’s Common Grace. Understanding the importance of reaching out to the evangelical community, Kuyper’s work is essential in developing evangelical principles and social thought. The Common Grace translation project is summarized by the Acton Institute:
There is a trend among evangelicals to engage in social reform without first developing a coherent social philosophy to guide the agenda. To bridge this gap, Acton Institute and Kuyper College are partnering together to translate Abraham Kuyper’s seminal three-volume work on common grace (De gemeene gratie). Common Grace was chosen because it holds great potential to build intellectual capacity within evangelicalism and because a sound grasp of this doctrine is what is missing in evangelical cultural engagement. Common Grace is the capstone of Kuyper’s constructive public theology and the best available platform to draw evangelicals back to first principles and to orient their social thought.
The Grand Rapids Press interviewed Stephen Grabill, director of programs at the Acton Institute who is also serving as the general editor of the translation project. Grabill explained the current relevancy of Kuyper’s work:
“In terms of the way Christians have brought their faith into the public sphere in the last 30 years, Kuyper represents a much more thoughtful and reflective way of building a constructive public theology,” Grabill said.
“He wasn’t a policy wonk but an idea guy who sought to synthesize a lot of movement and point to various economic political trends that integrated the Christian faith and did it in a way that didn’t politicize the faith, which is a breath of fresh air to people today.”
[…]
Grabill said he hopes the translation will provide evangelicals with a coherent social philosophy to guide their agendas in a way he believes is lacking today.
“I think Kuyper would say both the left and the right have polarized the gospel in ways that may have been unintentional in the beginning of the process,” Grabill said.
“They need a better understanding of culture, and what Kuyper does is he provides the foundational theological and philosophical thought to understand culture in a way that’s constructive and not ideological, and merely an attempt to change it to a different end.”
Volume one of Common Grace is scheduled to appear in the fall of 2012.
Readers can sign up for project updates by clicking here and can become fans of Common Grace on Facebook by clicking here.
Click here to read the full article appearing in the Grand Rapids Press.
