Kuyper on Diverse Literary Forms

Keith Plummer, of The Christian Mind, sent me this quote from Abraham Kuyper about a month ago. I am not sure of the source for this quote, but it is brilliant. It addresses the significance of the diverse literary forms in scripture.

There is a tendency among evangelicals to reduce the bible to the propositional. It's as if the expressions are getting in the way of our formation of propositional checklists. Our reductionistic mentality bypasses the significance of the diverse literary forms found in the bible, which were purposefully inspired by the Holy Spirit. These diverse literary forms are put there to address the whole person, not merely man's cognitive faculties. Truth is not less than the propositional, but it is much more. Here's the Kuyper quote:

"Man received in his creation more than one string to the harp of his soul, and according to the nature of the objects that hold his attention his mood changes, he strikes a different key, and his mental action assumes new phases....Thus the human mind is disposed by nature to a multiformity of expression, which sustains connection with the multiformity of material that engages our attention. And since there is a wide difference in the material that constitutes the content of Revelation, it is entirely natural that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has made use of that multiformity of our spiritual expression, and thus assumes at one time a lyric character, at another time an epical, sometimes even a dramatic, but especially also one that is didactic. To some extent one may even say that in these aesthetic variegations certain fundamental forms are given for inspiration, and if need be the entire content of the Scripture might be divided after these four fundamental types."