The Question of Sovereignty
Those in whose hands authority over this Foundation rests have entrusted me with the honorable task of inaugurating their School for higher education by introducing it on the public stage before Government and People. I ask you to grant me, in full measure, the quiet advantage of a benevolent ear and an indulgent judgment. The earnestness of that plea will speak for itself when you consider what awaits me: not an inaugural address upon taking office, nor a rectorial discourse, but something harder. By the very nature of my task, with all the quieter retreats of scholarly inquiry cut off from me, I am thrust onto that slippery ground of public life, where nettles burn at every hedge and thorns wound you at every step.
For it cannot be concealed, and none of us wishes to gloss it over: it was not love of abstract learning that drove us as patrons to this work. What drove us to this bold, if not presumptuous, endeavor was the deeply held sense of duty that what we did had to be done, for Christ’s sake, for the name of the Lord, in the higher and holier interest of our people and our land. Our appearance here is therefore by no means altogether innocent. We are deeply convinced that the public interest which, through good report and ill alike, preceded this Foundation and now attends its opening has nothing to do with us personally. It sprang solely from the impression that the Netherlands was witnessing an event which might well leave its mark on the future of the nation.
For if, measured by a higher standard, we could reconcile ourselves to the existing state of affairs, why would we have undertaken this work? There lies in our undertaking, however softly spoken, a certain protest against what surrounds us, with a claim that something better was to be found. That reflection alone makes one timid and uneasy, if only through the appearance of presumption that glides like a shadow behind it. This could give offense; this could cause pain.
I hasten therefore to assure you that whether we look at the power of learning, influence, and gold arrayed against us, or consider with humility our own smallness and weakness, it is not arrogant self-importance but quiet humility that speaks through the confidence of our words. We would have preferred to remain in obscurity. To see others go before us would have been far more restful. But since that could not be, since we had to act, we stepped into public view, deeply conscious of men’s aversion or favor toward us, yet ordering our conduct exclusively according to what, in our view, was required by the honor of our God.
You expect me to tell you what the School I am introducing has come to do in the garden of the Netherlands; why it raises the cap of liberty on the spear; and what makes it gaze so intently at the book of Reformed religion. Allow me to link the answers to those three questions through the single idea of Sphere Sovereignty, the stamp our Foundation bears in three respects: in its national significance, in its scientific purpose, and in its Reformed character.
First. To present our Foundation in its national significance is the first part of my address. The life of our nation too, Gentlemen, is struggling through a crisis in this momentous century, a crisis shared with all nations that count, a crisis running through the whole world of thoughtful humanity. In every crisis, an endangered life is at stake: the crisis may lead either to renewal or to death. I ask then: what is this “endangered life”? What is the prize at stake in this crisis for our nation?
And who still repeats what was once customarily answered, as though the struggle were about progress or conservation, about the one-sided or the many-sided, about the ideal or reality, or even about poverty or wealth? The inadequacy, the disproportion, the shallowness of each of those diagnoses had by then appeared in too clear a light. “Clerical” and “liberal” then became the watchwords, as though the question concerned the abuse or purification of ecclesiastical influence. But this screen too was contemptuously thrust aside, and awareness spread from the center outward to ever wider circles, grasped at first only by the higher seers of our century, that in the current crisis of the nations it is not a shade of opinion, not an interest, not a right, but a living person who is at stake: he who once swore to be King and, for that sovereign claim to kingship, gave his life upon a cross at Golgotha.
“The Nazarene, our holy inspirer, inspiring ideal, ideal genius of piety!” was long cried out in the most generous tones. But history refuted that praise as contradicting the Nazarene’s own claims. His calm, transparently clear, divinely human consciousness claimed nothing less than that he was Messiah, the Anointed One and Sovereign of all kings, possessing “all power in heaven and on earth.” The charge for which he had to die, written on the placard at the cross, was not that he was a hero of faith or a “martyr of honor,” but that he was King of the Jews, the bearer of Sovereignty.
And over that Sovereignty, over the existence or non-existence of that power in him who was born of Mary, the minds that think, the powers that rule, and the nations that share in life are now as fiercely in turmoil as in the first three centuries. That “King of the Jews” is either the saving truth to which every people says Amen, or the fundamental lie which all people are bound to combat. There lies the question of Sovereignty: first placed on the agenda in the blood of the Nazarene, it has now again drawn a rift through the world of our entire spiritual, human, and national existence.
What is Sovereignty? Will you not go along with me if I describe it as the authority that has the right, the duty, and the power to break and to avenge every resistance to its will? And does not the people’s ineradicable sense also tell you that original, absolute Sovereignty can rest in no creature, but must coincide with the Majesty of God? If you believe in God at all as the Conceiver and Creator, the Ordainer and Determiner of all things, your soul must proclaim God Triune as the sole absolute Sovereign. This confession must include, and here I lay the emphasis, the acknowledgment that this high Sovereign has transferred, and continues to transfer, his authority to human persons. Thus, in practice on earth, in the visible realm, you never encounter God himself directly; sovereign authority always appears before you in a human office.
And here, with that placing of God’s Sovereignty in a human office, arises the extremely important question: how does that transfer proceed? Does the all-encompassing Sovereignty of God pass undivided onto one single man? Or does the one who is called Sovereign on earth possess the power to compel obedience only within a limited sphere, a sphere bounded by other spheres in which someone beside him is Sovereign, and not he?
On that question the answer differs according to whether one stands within the sphere of Revelation or outside it.
Among those whose thought had no place for special revelation, the answer of old was: “Undivided as far as practicable, and therefore penetrating every sphere!”
“As far as practicable,” because God’s sovereignty over what is above lies beyond human reach, his sovereignty over nature beyond human power, and his sovereignty over fate beyond human ordering. But for the rest, yes: without Sphere Sovereignty, State power commands without limit, exercising control over persons, over their lives, over their rights, over their conscience, and even over their faith. There were many gods then, and accordingly, through the principle that united force is stronger, the one unlimited State became more imposing and more majestic than the divided power of the gods. And so the State, embodied in the Caesar, at last became God itself, the god-“State” that could tolerate no other “states” beside it. This explains the passion for world dominion: “The divine Augustus!” was its cry, and Caesarism its cult. This was a deeply sinful notion, not fully dissected for the thinking mind until eighteen centuries later in Hegel’s system, with the State as “the present God.”
By contrast, Jehovah proclaimed among Israel through the interpreters of Messianic prophecy: “Not merely as far as practicable, but absolutely: that Sovereignty has been transferred undivided and unbroken!” And that man-Messiah appeared with power in heaven, power over nature, the claim of power over all peoples, and power, among all peoples, also over the conscience and over faith. Even the bond of mother to child had to yield where he demanded obedience. Here, therefore, absolute Sovereignty over all visible and invisible things, over what is both spiritual and material, was placed in the hands of a man: not one kingdom among others, but the absolute Kingdom.
“To be King, for this I was born and for this I came into the world.” “All power in heaven and on the whole earth is mine.” “One day all my enemies will be subjected to me, and every knee will bow before me!” This is the Sovereignty of the Messiah, which the prophet once announced; upon which the Nazarene laid claim; which he demonstrated in its beginning by performing miracles; which his apostles described; and which the congregation of that Christ, on their authority, confesses as undivided, yet nonetheless transferred, or rather, assumed in order to be given back again. That complete harmony will not break through until Sovereignty passes back from the Messiah to God himself, who shall then be “all in all.”
