Reflections on Biblical and
Christian Philosophy

Biblical and Christian Views of the Great Philosophers of History

Abraham Kuyper on Immanuel Kant.  "Philosophical pantheism ... systematically fuses every thesis and antithesis into a synthesis ... and casts all that seem dissimilar as similar, indeed finally being of the same substance.... Philosophy does not really deal with what really exists but with the image of existing reality which it has caught in its mental mirror, or more correctly, for itself.  Kant set this ball rolling by proclaiming that real existence eludes us and that at least the shape and dimensions of what we perceive arise from within ourselves." (Italics are Kuyper's.  From Bratt, below, page 373.)

"The fundamental error of (Kant's) philosophy is that it makes humanity autonomous, spontaneous; it derives reason from itself; by this procedure humanity makes itself God and becomes pantheistic."  Kuyper is quoting Franz von Baader (1765-1841).  (This quote is taken from James Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, page 377.)

Abraham Kuyper on Georg W. F. Hegel.  "Hegel clearly perceived that his system of identity could not co-exist with standard logic.  Accordingly, he did not shrink from assailing logic itself, specifically by cutting through the principle of the excluded middle.  Only so did he clear the road for his cavalcade of identity concepts.  He proceeded to let them file past his intellect two by two, arm in arm: the 'something' side-by-side with the 'nothing,' the 'here' with the 'beyond,' the finite with the infinite, the ideal with the real, being with thought, object with subject, the different with the indifferent, freedom with necessity, imaginary light with imaginary darkness."  (Bratt, Abraham Kuyper, page 381)