A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
Abraham Kuyper’s famous three-volume work on the work of the Holy Spirit remains a classic, holding high acclaim in its first publication with a Foreword from B.B. Warfield. We don’t know why it took us so long to feature it here on Books At a Glance, but we’re eager to bring it to your attention today!
Table of Contents
Volume 1:
1 Introduction
2 The Creation
3 Re-Creation
4 The Holy Scripture of the Old Testament
5 The Incarnation of the Word
6 The Mediator
7 The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit
8 The Apostolate
9 The Holy Scriptures of the New Testament
10 The Church of Christ
Volume 2:
1 Introduction
2 The Sinner to be Wrought Upon
3 Preparatory Grace
4 Regeneration
5 Calling and Repentance
6 Justification
7 Faith
Volume 3:
1 Sanctification
2 Love
3 Prayer
Selected Quotes
- “God’s highest purposes are realized when the Holy Spirit makes man’s heart His dwelling-place.” (23)
- “In nature the Spirit of God appears as creating, in grace as re-creating. We call it re-creation because God’s grace creates not something inherently new, but a new life in an old and degraded nature.” (48)
- “That the Bible is the product of the Chief Artist, the Holy Spirit; that He gave it to the Church and that in the Church He uses it as His instrument, can not be over-emphasized.” (60)
- “Behind the word stands the propelling power of the Holy Spirit, and thus it becomes effectual, and changes the whole condition of things.” (66)
- “Scripture teaches us again and again that Christ performed His mediatorial work controlled and impelled by the Holy Spirit.” (97)
- “Moreover, the apostolate belongs to the great things which the Holy Spirit has wrought. All that the Holy Scripture declares concerning the apostles compels us to look for an explanation of their persons and mission in a special work of the Holy Spirit.” (139)
- “And yet in both prophet and apostle inspiration is that wholly extraordinary operation of the Holy Spirit whereby, in a manner for us incomprehensible and to them not always conscious, they were kept from the possibility of error.” (157)
- “The charismata or spiritual gifts are the divinely ordained means and powers whereby the King enables His Church to perform its task on earth.” (184)
- “The work of grace exhibited in the eternal counsel can never be sufficiently praised. From Paradise to Patmos, revealed to prophets and apostles, it is transcendently rich and glorious.” (208)
- “…this is sure, that, according to the word and the consistent doctrine of our Church, sin, although it is essentially and exclusively privative and lacking independent existence, is yet in its consequences positive and in its workings destructive.” (261)
- “It can not be denied that God’s care for His elect does not begin at an arbitrary moment, but is interwoven with their whole existence, including their conception and even before their conception, with the mysteries of that redeeming love which declares: ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love’.” (284)
- “In regeneration we do not receive a new being, ego, or person, but our nature is reborn.” (311)
- “Hence we firmly maintain the indissoluble oneness of these two: ‘There is no regeneration without establishing the mystical union with Christ’; and again ‘There is no mystical union with Immanuel but in the regenerate’.” (325)
- “From the beginning to the end and throughout eternity the Holy Spirit is the Worker, of regeneration and conversion, of justification and every part of sanctification, of glorification, and of the bliss of the redeemed.” (339)
- “Calvin says beautifully and comprehensively that the object of saving faith is none other than the Mediator, and invariably in the garments of Sacred Scripture.” (397)
- “Faith and Scripture belong together; the Holy Spirit intended the one for the other.” (419)
- “Hence sanctification must be preached once again as a doctrine; it must be confessed, examined, and studied as a doctrine; to be followed by appropriate application like the preaching of any other doctrine; and godliness, spiritual life, and good works will be the result.” (433)
- “Sanctification is a gracious work of God, whereby in a supernatural way He gradually divests from sin the inclinations and dispositions of the regenerate and clothes them with holiness.” (474)
- “Sanctification is God’s work in us, whereby He imparts to our members a holy disposition, inwardly filling us with delight in His law and with repugnance to sin. But good works are acts of man, which spring from this holy disposition.” (485)
- “Good works are the ripe fruit from the tree which God has planted in sanctification.” (496)
- “This is the vital point which must animate and give direction to the whole matter: only to the glory of God. Every other intention makes the good work evil.” (502)
- “The Scripture teaches not only that the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and with Him Love, but also that He sheds abroad that Love in our hearts.” (527)
- “For what is the communion of saints otherwise than Love in its noblest and richest manifestations? And how is it here presented but as the very fruit of the Holy Spirit?” (548)
- “There is no point along the whole line of the world’s life which does not antagonize the Holy Spirit whenever He touches it. Whenever we are tempted by the world and inwardly animated by the Holy Spirit, there is a clash in the conscience.” (565)
- “The Holy Spirit comes with glorious blessings to the children of God under the New Covenant. They drink, not with scant measure, but from a full and overflowing cup.” (574)
- “It appears from Scripture, more than has been emphasized, that in the holy act of prayer there is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit working both in us and with us.” (618)