A percolating thought, long overdue

In the Comment article Sphere Sovereignty 101, Ray Pennings and James Brink say this about Abraham Kuyper:

“To a large extent, his idea of sphere sovereignty was rooted in his theology. As a strong Calvinist, Kuyper could not attribute to any human institution an absolute authority -- not even an absolute temporal authority. To do so would be idolatrous. Thus, placing limitations on the power of government was a simple acknowledgement that only God has the right to absolute sovereign rule.”

I suggest Kuyper’s position ought to be rethought in terms of the image of God. YHWH gave man the task of doing what He does; acting like He does. YHWH's works is to bear dominion fruitfully, to husband, nurture, rule, beautify and love; thus, so is man's.

There are no limits on the extent to which we must image God. But when any institution or person coerces others away from their ability to image God, then they have acted idolatrously.

Why does this give a better grounding for Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty? I suggest there are three main reasons:

1. Because the justification for legitimate authority is ill-defined, and its application therefore problematic at best. The factors giving rise to authority are wholly mysterious, irreducible to formulas. We know when authority is present; we don't know how -- and much less, whether it is philosophically justified. Your grandmother, the traffic officer, the chairman of the school committee, your best friend, your wife, and your boss all have authority of a sort. But how and why? The mysteriousness of an authority that just is, that grows organically from a complex of myriad, unknown factors simply defies the formulaic delimiters we so enjoy. The endless arguments about how and to what extent authority may be granted, formed, held and exercised by all the various people-associations within a community are thus aimed at the wrong level of analysis.

2. Because the image of God is about doing with what you have. Thus, it is immediately applicable. If authority should for some reason be found in a person or persons, the right question is not whether it is properly located in them, but what they do with it; how they manage the deference others yield to them. Any authority had by ‘rights’ may not be given away without impugning dignity, and thus is liable to the abuse of jealous, prideful guardianship. However, an authority found as a gifted resource, as a tool or talent, may be given away in the service of love, if that should further the purpose of God.

3. Because the predominant prophetic theme of the split between God and man is not a double ontology, set in terms of abstract attributes like authority – much less of mysterious incommunicable ‘absolutes’, finding their answer only in our relative analogues (though these are there, to be sure). Rather, the distinction is often (for want of a better term) ethical, set in terms of purpose, goal, character –- from our end, obedience. Thus, Jesus prayed not that his disciples would remember their place as creatures, but that they would be one, as he and God were one –- they in him and he in they, as he was in God. Jesus spoke only God's words; did only what he heard from his Father. This is the point of being created in God’s image, and of the second commandment which preserves it: man, and man alone, must be the representatives of YHWH, but he must do that absolutely, without assignation of that image to any other creature.

So, any human institution must be guided and circumscribed not by the gradient of an abstraction, a mysterious degree of 'authority' to which it is entitled by right, but rather by the exercise of power in love, as such is needed in order to act as God would. Each association of persons must have its own unique authority. In their respective spheres of operation and influence, they exercise love and guardianship better than any other –- almost invariably because of better relationships & knowledge (in the Hebrew sense). Thus, it is idolatrous for any human institution to trample that image and arrogate its tools to their own self-service.