This is no ancillary, disputed, or adiaphora truth that Kuyper was fussing over. This is the definition of denying the truth of the gospel in the most pernicious way possible—much in the way some false teachers had in Corinth. And yet, in later years, we find this Kuyper at the center of one of the most powerful revivals of orthodox Reformed thought in Europe.

Over the last few years I’ve been saddened to see a number of teachers and preachers of the Word of God, along with friends in the pews, begin a dubious doctrinal decline, wandering into either questionable teaching or even outright heresy. And believe me, I don’t use the termheresy lightly. The narratives are diverse, and the motivations multifarious, but in all, their tragic departure brings me distress for their spiritual lives and for the churches they serve.

What should we do in these cases? What should we think when someone we know departs from the truth of the faith “once for all delivered” and veers into what we believe to be serious, dangerous error? While I don’t have an exhaustive answer, we should at least rule out completely writing them off as lost and beyond hope.

Heretic to Hero

G. C. Berkouwer tells this story of theological giant Abraham Kuyper:

When Kuyper referred to Modernism as “bewitchingly beautiful,” he doubtlessly recalled the fascination which the modernism of Scholten had exerted on him as a student. He acknowledges in 1871 that he too had once dreamed the dream of Modernism. And when at the age of eighty he addressed the students of the Free University, he harked back to the “unspiritual presumption” which had caused him to slip. “At Leiden I joined, with great enthusiasm, in the applause given Professor Rauwenhoff when he, in his public lectures, broke with all belief in the Resurrection of Jesus.” “Now when I look back,” he writes, “my soul still shudders at times over the opprobrium I then loaded on my Savior.” (The Person of Christ, 9-10)

Early in his theological career Kuyper flirted with Modernism of the worst sort—a theology he would later recognize as a form of Arianism—and could even applaud the rejection of that most central, pivotal of gospel truths: the resurrection of Christ…..

This is no ancillary, disputed, or adiaphora truth that Kuyper was fussing over. This is the definition of denying the truth of the gospel in the most pernicious way possible—much in the way some false teachers had in Corinth. And yet, in later years, we find this Kuyper at the center of one of the most powerful revivals of orthodox Reformed thought in Europe.

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