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| Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). |
"The need of philosophy is a necessity which arises out of the impulse of the human consciousness for unity, and is therefore of equal importance to those who stand outside, as to those who are in the regeneration. To say that a Christian is less in need of philosophy is only the exhibition of spiritual sloth and lack of understanding. The more the enlightening restores harmony in our consciousness, the stronger must be the awakening of the impulse after an unitous (einheitlich) organic knowledge. While, on the other hand, the richer the data at our service, the better the hope of success in this. Philosophy which reckons only with natural data will always vibrate between a pantheistic, deistic and materialistic interpretation, and will never do more than form schools, while Christian philosophy, whose theistic point of departure is fixed, is able to lead to unity of interpretation within the circle of regeneration. But for this very reason theology will be able to go hand in hand with a Christian philosophy. It is the task of philosophy to arrange concentrically the results of all the other sciences, and if non-Christian philosophy ignores the results of theology, as though it were no science, theology is in duty bound to enter her protest against this. If, on the other hand, the philosopher himself is regenerate, and is historically and ecclesiastically in union with the life of palingenesis, then of course in his studies he includes the results of theology, together with the results of all the other sciences; and it is his care, architectonically to raise such a cosmological building that of themselves the results of theology also find their place in it."
~ Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 614-615.
