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1 " The Christian community must live out it's calling in the conscious recognition that secularism is false. "
― , The Calvinistic Concept of Culture
2 " For Kuyper, both of these models embody a fundamental error. The medieval perspective rightly acknowledged God's rule over all cultural activity, but it mistakenly thought that this rule was to be mediated by the church. The secularist perspective rightly wanted to liberate culture from ecclesiastical control, but it wrongly insisted that to do so was to take it out from under God's rule. Kuyper's alternative is summarized in the "not one square inch" manifesto. God's soverign rule extends over all of our lives. All that we do takes place-to use a favorite kuyperian phrase-Coram Deo before the face of God. "
3 " The family is the simplest and smallest unit of society and the real fountain of culture. If this fountain remains pure, man's culture has promise. But if it becomes polluted, all the rest will turn to dust and ashes, since the home is the foundation of the entire social structure. "
4 " Scripture is not only the authoritative guide for the way of salvation, but it furnishes man with an authoritative interpretation of reality as a whole. "
5 " Culture derives its meaning from man's faith in God; it is never an end in itself, but always a means of expressing one's religious faith. "
6 " The Christian is in the world, but not to be of it. This constitutes the basis of the perennial problem involved in the discussion of Christian culture. Because believers are not of the world, there have been many Christians who have taken a negative attitude toward culture. "
7 " One cannot keep on evangelizing the world without interfering with the world's culture. It devolves upon God's people, therefore, to contend for such a society which will give the maximum opportunity for us to live wholly Christian lives and the maximum opportunity for others to become Christians. "
8 " Culture is any and all human effort and labor expended upon the cosmos, to unearth its treasures and its riches and bring them into the service of man for the enrichment of human existence unto the glory of God. "
9 " In his separation from God in whose light alone man can see the truth, man lost his catholicizing spirit- he no longer (apart from regeneration) is able to see the meaning in life and view it as a whole. His culture was fragmentized. Man sees only a part reality, but he does not see its relation as a whole, nor does he ascend from the creature to the Creator. In his apostasy, man has fallen in love with the cosmos or some aspect of reality, and he worships the creation instead of the Creator. "
10 " Culture is "lived religion". It is the form that religion takes in the lives of men. "
11 " The problem of living a Christian life in a non-Christian society is pressing, since most of our social institutions are non-Christian and in pagan hands. The family remains the only trustworthy transmitter of Christian culture. "
12 " Rome changed the New Testament catholicity (which purifies and sanctifies as it's proper domain the whole of life) and has substituted in its place a dualism which separates the supernatural from the natural. "
13 " The primary principle of the Calvinistic system of thought is the direct and absolute sovereignty of God over all things. Such sovereignty is not one among the many attributes of God, but it comes to expression in all of His attributes. "
14 " Religion based on divine sovereignty is religion for God's sake. Religion is for God, for whom all things exist. Whereas all forms of Arminianistic Christianity make man the final arbiter of his own salvation, in Calvinism, God saves sovereignly, immediately, whom He wills. "
15 " Does the twentieth-century disciple have a right to discard the cultural mandate, twice given to the human race by Jehovah himself? Are we justified in turning the world and culture over to the enemies of God> How far does the kingship of Christ extend? "
16 " Due to their deep conviction of the sovereignty of God, the Word of God was taken very seriously by Calvinists. It became the unconditional norm for faith and life to the believer. The Divine injunction not to add or take away has been scrupulously observed by Calvinism. Thus, a Calvinistic ethic was developed with its high theism. Because God was held to be the absolute sovereign for man's life, it became simply a question of determining the will of God from His Word. Calvinistic ethics is not a system of opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God as revealed in the Bible the authoritative guide for social as well as personal direction. "
17 " A biblical metaphysics implies a biblical theory of knowledge and a biblical ethic. "
18 " Sin has not destroyed the creaturely relationship of man to his maker, who made him a cultural creature with the mandate to replenish and subdue the earth. Sin has not destroyed the cultural urge in man to rule, since man is an image-bearer of the Ruler of heaven and earth. Neither has sin destroyed the cosmos, which is man's workshop. Culture then, is a must for God's image bearers, but it will be either a demonstration of faith or apostasy, either a God-glorifying or a God-defying culture. "
19 " Since man is a moral being, his culture cannot be a-moral. Because man is a religious being, his culture, too, must be religiously oriented. "
20 " Although the realization of values in a culture may seem on the surface to be concerned merely with the temporal and material, this is appearance only, for man is a spiritual being destined for eternity, exhaustively accountable to his Creator-Lord. "