Kuyper’s Flawed Example: Sphere Sovereignty on the Personal Front

In book 2 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates’ conversation with his young friends takes an unexpected turn. Plato’s brothers Gaucon and Adeimantos have challenged Socrates to defend justice for justice’s sake and not merely to gain a reputation for being just. Why would people wish to do justice if they were deprived of its tangible rewards? To answer this question, Socrates memorably shifts the discussion to the building of a city. Why? Because if he can demonstrate what justice is within the city, he can by analogy reason back to locating justice in the individual person, which he and his companions undertake to do in the succeeding books of the dialogue.

I was reminded of Socrates’ rhetorical strategy several years ago as I read James Bratt’s magisterial biography of one of my heroes, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat. Kuyper, as readers may know, originated the term “sphere sovereignty,” a translation of the Dutch expression sovereiniteit in eigen kring, or “sovereignty in one’s own circle.” Facing the twin threats of liberal individualism and socialist statism, Kuyper, based on his reading of the Bible and the larger Christian tradition, came up with this rather inelegant phrase to describe his party’s unique approach to society.Above all, sphere sovereignty entails balance—a balanced society in which the various activities and institutions develop in proportionate fashion, with none attempting to crowd out the others. Families are simply families, irreplaceably fulfilling their responsibilities in providing a context uniquely appropriate for nurturing the next generation. Businesses engage in economic activity, using their God-given know-how and material resources to provide goods and services to a larger public. The gathered church offers worship to God, preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and maintaining discipline among its members. The state pursues public justice, undertaking to co-ordinate the various spheres and to maintain this often precarious societal balance.

This balance is not a static or permanent one. Society is constantly on the move, with new people being born and new communities being organized every day. When a school is started, legal and social room must be created for it to function as a school. It may last for centuries, like Oxford and Cambridge Universities, or it may last but a few years in which case it makes only a temporary mark on the social landscape. The balance is thus a fluctuating balance, not a fixed one with rigid boundaries between the various spheres, which inevitably relate to each other in different and changing ways.

However, it is possible that this balanced development will fail in some fundamental fashion, as one sphere grows too large at the expense of the others. Two possible distortions are statism and individualism. Statism sees the state, despite its divine mandate to maintain balance, take on too much. At its very worst, the state becomes idolatrous and totalitarian, admitting no limits to its own competence. It interferes in the minutest corners of life, undertaking to micromanage the activities of a complex social fabric, to the detriment of justice. Individualism sees the individual taking on too exalted a status, with virtually everything becoming a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Paradoxically, the increasing demands of individuals and the distortions brought on by individualism tend over the long term to call forth the overweening state.

Now what if we, following Socrates’ method, were to apply sphere sovereignty to the individual person? What would it look like? To begin with, while sphere sovereignty distinguishes among the various authoritative agents in a differentiated society, individuals find themselves exercising authoritative offices in many settings. The most basic such office is the imago Dei, the image of God, in which we are created. This central office is in turn dispersed among a variety of offices conditioned by the setting in which they occur. Within the classroom both instructors and students bear authoritative offices relevant to its fundamental purpose, namely, education. Within the family, husband, wife, sons and daughters bear familial offices whose responsibilities are encapsulated in the scriptural commands to honour our parents (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16) and to train up children in the way they should go (Prov 22:6). Within the state or body politic, presidents, kings, prime ministers, members of parliament and citizens alike bear authoritative offices which are fit avenues of public service. The gathered church contains such offices as bishop, pastor, elder, deacon and lay person.

Much as sphere sovereignty entails a balanced development within society as a whole, so also it implies that the individual person, created in God’s image and bearing several offices simultaneously, must keep those offices in proper balance, never allowing one to crowd out the others. I myself am at the same time husband to my wife, father to my daughter, son to my parents, one-time classroom instructor and employee of a university, member of a church congregation, citizen of Canada, member of more than one professional association and so forth. When I step behind the lectern in the classroom, I do so as a professor of political science. As such, my attention should be focussed on the subject matter of the course and on my students. I ought not to be daydreaming about my wife and daughter. Similarly, when I am with my family, I do so in my capacity as husband and father. My wife and daughter should receive my full attention, and I should refrain from daydreaming about my students or about the role of the Privy Council Office in our governmental system.

Here is where I am somewhat ambivalent about Kuyper, whom I have otherwise found so insightful in my own efforts to contribute to the articulation of a biblically Christian political theory. My own books would not have been written without the inspiration I received, beginning four and a half decades ago, from the great statesman’s efforts in so many fields of endeavour.

Nevertheless, despite my admiration for Kuyper, I hesitate to recommend his personal life as an example for students to emulate. Those attempting to follow the path he trod will almost certainly burn themselves out in fairly short order. Given the number of hats he wore during his lifetime and the way he spread himself so thin, it is not surprising that he suffered two breakdowns during his life, as depicted in Bratt’s biography. Certainly Kuyper was the giant of his era, founding the first modern political party in the Netherlands and pioneering mass mobilization techniques familiar in political campaigns everywhere. He published two periodicals for which he himself wrote. He was a parish pastor. He launched an unsuccessful effort to reform the national Hervormde Kerk, eventually being compelled to establish an alternative, more orthodox denomination. He was a professor, establishing a Christian university in which he himself taught. Most famously, of course, he served as prime minister between 1901 and 1905, decisively reshaping the life of his country for at least two generations.

But what of Kuyper the family man? Was he an attentive father and husband? Although his personal life is obviously not the major focus of Bratt’s biography, we do know that his engagement to Johanna Schaay saw him undertaking a patronizing Pygmalion-like effort to raise his prospective bride to his own presumed intellectual level. We know as well of his anguish at seeing one of their sons abandon faith in Christ for theosophy. The available evidence indicates a man who, despite his deep faith in God and zeal for the advance of his kingdom, was less than fully adept at striking a proper balance between personal and professional life.

To be sure, I resist the current popular tendency to find flaws in our past heroes. It smacks, not only of disrespect for our elders, but of a self-serving effort to make our own imperfect lives look better by comparison. At the same time, if the complete life coram Deo consists of an appropriate balance of labour, liturgy and leisure, it is difficult not to conclude that the great Abraham Kuyper, while powerfully preaching a proportionate progressive development of society, may not, after all, offer our young people the best model of a balanced personal life.

Yet I cannot close on that note. As I was typing this piece, it occurred to me that I was downstairs in my home office working on a week night while my wife and daughter were upstairs in the family room talking and laughing—without me! Time to put this aside, I thought, close up my laptop computer and strive to live a more balanced life. May we all go and do likewise.

Kuyper, Sphere Sovereignty