challenge to theology and the church. In Kuyper’s estimate “a time like ours” was a time “when especially the church question dominates every other issue.”3 Therefore Kuyper devoted himself to the doctrine of the church, and he developed his distinctive ecclesiological answer, the church as organism and as institution, in response to the social challenges of his day. Ecclesiology concerns the social nature of humanity’s relation to God. The social disintegration that