God does not change, Bavinck said, because he is. He is independent of time and has life in himself. To say that God becomes as pantheism assumes diminishes his character. As Bavinck’s analysis of God’s immutability moves forward to discuss God’s infinity his conclusions are reassuringly warm: God’s eternality is not static, monotonous, rigid immobility but is unlimited in virtue and creative potential. For Bavinck and the Reformed the ‘sad’ truth is that this doctrine is often far from serene and meditative, but is used as scientific fighting words within and without Christian theology. But when it comes to Bavinck’s view of time and eternity we have to ask, for argument sake, is he on the right track? While some say yes, others might say no.

Scripture affirms that God is eternal and that his being is not determined by time (Isa. 41:4; Rev. 1:8; Ps. 90:2; 93:2, et. al.) or measured by time. Bavinck defends the Scriptural view against the twin rivals of Deism and pantheism which confuse the concepts of time and eternity as mathematical quantity and not as quality: “gradual, not essential.”  Deism’s own definition of eternity as time infinitely extended in two directions (past/future) is false, says Bavinck, because time serves for God’s existence. Pantheism asserts that eternity is the substantive cause of time which “pulls God down into the stream of time” (Spinoza) causing God’s existence.

Bavinck’s solution to these arguments rests mainly on Aquinas’ and Augustine’s response to Aristotle: the AAA for theological breakdowns. E.P. Heidemann observes that Bavinck sometimes relies too heavily (i.e. conveniently) on Thomas, or Aristotle.[1] Or in this case Augustine. “Time began with the creature” is a more reliable statement than vice versa: Time, whether intrinsic or extrinsic is something that can be measured and used to measure the duration of things in motion. Hence, concludes Augustine and Bavinck, there can be no time in God. Boethius (bk. V) is also brought in as supporting evidence, but, unfortunately for the reader, Bavinck does not (here) treat the Boethian problem that time violates God’s eternality (p. 163). This will eventually flare up into problems with divine foreknowledge and human freedom in Nelson Pike’s classic God and Timelessness and Paul Helm’s ample reply in Eternal God (ch. 6). For some, Bavinck’s discussion of time is out-dated but he does have the one thing that others do not.

God’s eternity is identical with his being and therefore regarded as the fullness and glory of his being. Bavinck does not often employ analogies anywhere in his work, and compared to older classical works e.g. Stephen Charnock, this keeps the discussion fresh and forward moving. Following Thomas’ analogy, God does not inhabit eternity like an idle person suffering from boredom, but like “a cheerful laborer, for whom time barely exists and days fly by.” There is difference between time and eternity but the distinction is a formal one assuming time is innate without self-existence and consciousness. God’s consciousness alone comprehends time, making time subservient to his eternal rule (1 Tim. 1:17).

When looking for the origin of emotion, William James asked, ‘do we run from the bear because we are afraid’ or is it the other way around? For James the bear was not the source of fear but the physical response to the situation was the cause of the emotion. While it’s not exactly ‘case closed’ for James one thing is sure: human beings respond and react to stuff. Not so with God. How so? If God were not immutable, he would not be God. But if Bavinck is going to stand with orthodoxy and defend God’s immutability he has to wrestle the bear.

The human experience of God’s wrath and love, guilt and forgiveness, presence and abandonment coupled with the texts that describe God as being, unchangeable in his own nature have lead to the doctrine of divine immutability. Following a careful exegesis of the divine name(s), Bavinck’s analysis of God’s incommunicable attributes of independence and immutability is harvested from Philo, Irenaeus and Augustine to Bernard, Anselm, and John of Damascus. The Open Theism controversy within the last decade – whose conceptual roots are aligned with ‘process’ theology rather than Arminianism (as is usually claimed within evangelical circles) would be no shock to Bavinck. For Bavinck the most serious challenge does not come within mainline orthodoxy but stems from “pantheistic criticism” from without.

For the orthodox Christian, Pantheism is like being stranded on an island facing a polar bear that over a few seasons vanishes from sight. Eventually the narrative of pantheism breaks down into a confusing labyrinth leading to vague conclusions and disappointment. We must, affirms Bavinck, rejoice in the light of scripture and hold fast the confessions.

There’s a TV show with a highly fantastic plot relevant to Bavinck’s formulation of God’s independence. On this show, survivors of a plane crash form tribes and collectives to solve problems and battle wits with other tribes and collectives on a supernatural island. The island itself is a character exerting powerful forces on the other players, challenging them to make hard decisions and drive mysterious agendas and sub-plots forward. There is dramatic tension between the island’s supernatural power and the character’s free-will, as they work to uncover various crimes and riddles that meet them week to week. The show’s title sums it up perfectly: Lost. Lost’s concept is a pitch perfect demonstration of the pantheistic worldview: mysterious spiritual energies conducting a select people along a chosen path, through a sacred place towards enlightenment. So where’s the fatal flaw? For Bavinck and the reformed, it’s a strange case of freedom vs. independence.

Our knowledge of God, patterned after scripture, does not limit God because it is established in him: creation is revelation and scripture affirms it. Pantheism, argues Bavinck, cannot acknowledge God’s independence from the cosmos. They say personality and self-consciousness are contradictory in a boundless being. If so then God’s perfections is the power that holds everything together and directs the cosmic order. That’s not to say God’s power and disposition change with the wind but its close.

Christian theology holds that God’s absolute being is perfect, independent (aseity) and unchangeable – attributes included. If he changed he would diminish or, from an ecological point of view, deplete. Every creature is dependent but has “a distinct existence of its own” (cf. Ps. 24:1). Self-preservation and the free agency of humankind, argues Bavinck, is a weak analogy of God’s independence but proffers enough natural proof to confirm the aseity of God according to scripture. The name of God revealed to Moses (Ex. 3:6) affirms God’s independent immutable being is full of grace: what God was to the patriarchs he will be for his people forever. Pantheism can never arrive at a description of grace or special providence in the believer’s life. When free-will is the highest virtue illumination becomes elusive and nature can only provide so many clues. It’s like a TV show running in syndication. Reruns do not add additional insight: their contents are frozen, doomed to repeat the same scenario over and over. But within the church, the activity of theology and doxology come fresh insight and new strength from the one in whom we live, move, and have our being.

We’ve been sifting through some of the high points of Bavinck’s doctrine of God, offering up small, somewhat uncritical summaries of his thought. In volume two Bavinck has an almost throw-away statement that carries a cautionary tone and is even little haunting: “there is no guarantee of a better job, preferment or worldly gain that comes with the knowledge of God.” He’s correct. So why study God if there is no patent success or material fulfillment? The answer, says Bavinck, is obvious.

If theology has any object other than God for its starting point it loses its character. Bavinck has been saying this all along: the subjectivity of modern theology led to an untenable mysticism and pantheism that could not be supported by scripture or the confessions. Across the street from the Reformed, Rome has the view that grace compliments nature leaving Christ on the sidelines waiting to enter into the world and be useful. Other views are usually anthropocentric or create a dualism between God and the world that pushes him and his follower’s right out the door. This cloud is unknowing.

But God has revealed himself to humankind, argues Bavinck, sin notwithstanding. Grace has permeated the world (uniquely through Christ) and is sustained by the creator as easily as a potter shapes clay. The church is certain of this from scripture and her constant testing and validating scripture doctrine. So long as Christian dogmatics retains God as her main objective, the church will thrive in worship and in truth (Heb. 12:1-2).

Tie it all together and you have the bedrock underlying the problems between Pelagius and Augustine, Calvin and Pighius, works and imputed righteousness, repentance and participation, Christ and the world. What do you get for knowing God? Pursuing God? The answer is finding God and enjoying him, putting to bed the uncertainty that comes with not knowing if he’s ‘out there’ or finding him only in a brief moment of crisis or something like that. Put another way, pursuing God with the expectation of anything other than finding him is immediately off track and a recipe for disillusionment. What Bavinck is essentially saying is that the loss of objectivity in theology is the thing responsible for much of the confusion, disorganization and apathy that have plagued the modern era church. Yet for all that Bavinck is unmoved. God’s name and character have been revealed in scripture and testified to in nature. Next time we will undertake Bavinck’s exegesis of the Lord’s Name and a formidable challenge to the pursuit of God.

Ron Gleason’s new biography, Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, Theologian (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publications, 512 pps., $29.99, paperback, available May 31, 2010) is a warm and inviting portrait of one Holland’s most influential Reformed theologians. Bavinck’s theology is rigorous yet deeply concerned with the quality of the life of faith and Gleason’s book captures that Bavinckian vitality with great acumen. Gleason’s prose is highly accessible and enjoyable reading, which should satisfy the academic and the casual reader. Anyone who has struggled with the tensions between the sophistication of modern life and a strict Christian upbringing will highly prize this biography.

Gleason starts out with the pious background of the Bavinck family. The story centers predominantly on Herman’s father Jan and his pastoral vocation. Gleason’s sympathetic narrative reads like many classic evangelical biographies such as Iain Murray on Pink and Edwards or William Arnot’s Life of the Rev. James Hamilton. Gleason occasionally glosses over some detail with high praise for the strong ideals and values of the Bavincks ministry and home life but the ample footnotes keep the reader on task. Yet Gleason does not go entirely overboard either, presenting the differences between the HK and CRC in a fair and accurate light. Gleason’s ability to remain objective throughout when presenting sensitive issues such as Bavinck’s transition to Kampen, the Bavinck / Kuyper debate on presumptive regeneration and the fallout of the Groningen Synod (1899) is impressive.

Bavinck is all about balancing tensions and so is Gleason. One of the chapters that I felt personally closest to was Bavinck’s first and only pastorate at Franeker (Chapter 4). Bavinck faced all the dilemmas awaiting a young pastor: the work load, congregation politics, and faithfulness to scripture in a dry, positivist climate. According to Gleason, Franeker had a string of pastors that did virtually nothing to benefit the spiritual wellbeing of the congregation yet Bavinck handled his situation with remarkable grace and humility, which I found surprising.. Gleason’s depiction of Bavinck as scholar and pastor is well rounded and multi-dimensional; presenting a man of high principles and a guy you could have coffee with.

“Bavinck has been for me,” writes Gleason, “an inspiration and a challenge. His grasp of theology in all its dimensions, his thoroughness and fairness in dealing with those whom he did not agree … his architectural gift in perceiving doctrine in its correlation with the Christian view as a whole … are some of the excellencies that characterize his work throughout.” Gleason has certainly captured the character and career of this essential theologian in a rare non-stuffy, non-boring lucid biography. We highly recommend this book especially to young pastors and seminarians worried about the great divide between the academy and the church, evangelism and a gospel-centered family. Gleason’s book is available May 31, 2010 from P&R Publications. Pray for hardcover.

Creation, says Bavinck, is a revelation of God. There is not a corner of the universe that does not reflect something of his glory. But creation does not reveal God’s perfections like they do in Christ. There are distinctions and gradations throughout creation from the archetype to the ectype. The incarnation of the suffering servant finds his parallel in, “the servant form of written language (1:354),” that is, in scripture. For Bavinck, God’s name and attributes are revealed generally in the world and specifically in Scripture with this insistence: revelation has distinctions but are never suspended outside of time and history. Thus the Reformed tradition has tried its best to discuss God’s attributes as communicable and incommunicable. The thing that matters most, says Bavinck is to hold firmly God’s transcendence and “kinship” with the world.

There are many names given for God across an array of folk and scientific thinking and experience. God does not need a name because there’s no comparison. Citing W. Robinson Smith’s classic work on Semitic religion, “the Semites loved to call God “Lord or King” because they felt completely dependent upon him; names were not used for philosophical theory but were relational. The revelation of the tetragrammaton to Israel proves that God is more than the “one who is.” He is the “Unchangeable One, (faithful), the eternally Self-consistent One, who never leaves or forsakes his people but always again seeks out and saves his own.” His grace, love, and assistance are unchanging because he is so in himself.

Next time we will look pause to consider what Bavinck is up to.

Any religion that first had to prove its god existed prior to worship is impoverished from the get go. Bavinck has demonstrated from an array of philosophical and theological authors that God’s essence cannot be grasped by (critical) reason, morals or ethics. Some have left God in the dark. Others have split God’s revelation between ethics and the rest of the universe with unfortunate results. Bavinck says no way. The God who reveals himself in ethics (the kingdom) is the maker of heaven and earth. Therefore distinctions are not the same as contradictions. Bavinck does not like the term ‘proofs’ for God’s existence, abstract terms such as ‘absolute,’ ‘sovereign’ or ‘supreme’ being are only tolerable. What’s the solution? Everything.

The space between pantheism and rationalism is a description of God as absolute personal being. “Absolute being, who alone has being in himself,” says Bavinck, is the best description of God and preferable above “personality, love, fatherhood and so forth, because it encompasses all of God’s attributes in an absolute sense.” Such a statement affirms God is perfect in wisdom, knowledge, holiness, love, and justice. According to pantheism, God loses distinction between himself and the cosmos. In rationalism God is often reduced to the ‘Y’ carried over in an equation. Neo-platonists sometimes switch between the masculine and neuter pronoun for God because he is a variable without definite character. If scripture is true, says Bavinck, Christian theology can discuss God’s being and attributes with certainty. The enormous problems and questions Bavinck raises here on knowing God is the stuff of personal growth. Next time we will explore Bavinck’s analysis on the Scripture names for God and their interpretation within and without Christian dogmatics.

The inability to know God’s essence is not a puzzle to be solved. It is instead the motive of worship and adoration. Bavinck saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness attempting to find God without the aid of sense-mediated signs and signifiers. For them the result was agnosticism steeped in a rejection of all metaphysical inquiry. So how does a dogmatician outfox the philosopher? Remain objectively certain, or as Bavinck says: stick to your guns.

Karl Barth said that “back to,” is not a good slogan for dogmatics. All science must move forward. Problem is how to do it in a positive climate that rejects all metaphysical investigation. The rationalism in favor of innate ideas confuses the light of reason with revelation. We have potential to grow in knowledge (all of which is mediate) but the concepts themselves are not innate. Granted, argues Bavinck, things are grasped because they are apprehended only in God (Malebranche) and in the soul by recollection (Plato). Natural theology cannot equal ‘revealed’ religion (illumination/inspiration) because it’s a reflection of the work of God in creation: if it’s natural it cannot be the product of human reason. In that limited sense the world does not take us away from God but leads us to him.

Bavinck’s analysis is dense but his ability to navigate wildly competitive views of is profound. If God’s incomprehensibility without the Church leans towards pantheism; within the Church an overemphasis on contemplation assumes the highest value as authentic religious experience. For Bavinck the priority on the inner life leads to mysticism and withdrawal from the world. Yet when Christians perform theology they are rooted firmly in the understanding that God’s essence is unknowable and that all figures of speech borrowed from experience speaks to higher things (John of Damascus). Next week Bavinck begins his investigation into the names of God.

Last week Bavinck led us onto the negative path to knowing God. Even in the modern age, John Lloyd has humorously noted that we can’t see anything that matters. We know little about the world and we know even less about God. In Bavinck’s day the doctrine of God’s incomprehensibility tended to agnosticism (Hegel) or a theology equal to anthropology (Fichte). What is gained by the ‘recovery’ of God’s incomprehensibility? Peace that passes understanding? Inexpressible joy? Bavinck can’t wait to find out.

Theology since scholasticism lost the impact of God’s incomprehensibility. Philosophy took it up especially in the thinking of Kant and Hegel. For Kant, God’s being is lost in the critique of pure reason because, “the soul, the world, and God cannot be objectively demonstrated.” Attributing intellect and will to God is “practical knowledge” but adds nothing to the volume of human science. Hegel attempted to strip the concept of God from all sense-related forms but ran aground in the claim that, “a sense-related representation could never be overcome in the idea of God and therefore (Hegel) ended up in atheism.” Atheism usually retreats to agnosticism, says Bavinck, because Hegel reasoned that “our God-consciousness is nothing other than God’s self-consciousness. God exists to the extent that he is known by us.” Man, the measure of all things infinite. So what’s the solution?

Bavinck suggests that negative predicates (“God is unknowable, beyond comprehension, etc.) carry real weight but they “prove too much.” The world is, after all, knowable and positive predicates of God’s character and personality are grounded in revelation. Can Christians ascribe to God a personality and maintain that he is absolute? Bavinck says yes, “Our knowledge does not limit God because 1. It is grounded in him, 2. Can only exist through him,” and if absoluteness of God’s being (according to pantheism/rationalism) precludes all limitation, “it is equally wrong (for rationalism) to call him absolute, unity, good, and essential being.” God’s self-consciousness is as deep and rich as his being, meaning that his self-consciousness is not dependent on non-being or the competent grasp of finite beings to maintain existence. Mystery is not the same as ‘self-contradiction.’

The trick here is to illustrate what Bavinck is saying without using an unhelpful analogy. Suppose that agnosticism is saying, ‘Look. You theologians are giving God a personality which you can’t do anymore than you can give a personality to gravity or math.’ But [Reformed] theology is not ascribing personality to God in the same way personality is applied socially to other humans. We are not looking at God’s personality the same way we look at and admire a good actor who’s played the hero, the villain, and the comic relief. It’s like saying God has to be famous to exist. But this would mean God’s celebrity has to fit the mold of celebrity culture which drags God down to the level of finite being. The tension here between faith and rationalism is very important because it’s about redirecting the love of the creature to the love of God. Next week Bavinck tackles the problem of innate ideas and the faint notions of greater things.

Dogmatics takes for its starting point the certainty of God’s existence. Everything else is details. For Bavinck the outset of Christian theology has one thing in common with the long history of critical reflection on God’s existence: he is unknowable. But nonattainability of the knowledge of God is not the same as nothing. As long as scripture remains objectively center we worship whom we know.

The greatest dangers to theology are words and a devaluation of mystery. If theology becomes an exercise of rhetoric or replaces its objective vision (revelation) for the subjective impression (positivism) theology degenerates into anthropology (Fichte). The evolutionary theory in Bavinck’s day, for example, held that YHWH was a Hittite mountain God adopted by the Hebrews and localized on Mt. Sinai. But God is represented as the Creator (Gen. 2:4b) and “descends” from heaven at the scene of Babel (Gen. 11:5, 7) and “accompanies” Abraham and Jacob on their journeys. Point is, concludes Bavinck, that Old Testament revelation is preparatory, external in nature, “it does indeed furnish true and reliable knowledge of God, but not a knowledge that exhaustively corresponds to his being.” Signs of his presence are darkness (Ex. 20:21; Deut. 4:11; 5:22; 1 Kg. 8:12; 2 Chron. 6:1) possibly to show that natural light does not represent his brilliance.

Who is lost in the cloud of unknowing? From Plotinus to Erigena negative expressions of God’s being are more accurate though less satisfying. Scholasticism expressed God’s attributes in great detail but lost incomprehensibility in the shuffle. The Lutheran and Reformed, says Bavinck, lost sight of the significance of the doctrine yet the Remonstrant/Socinian wing did much worse, “Eternal life, they maintained [Rationalism/Socinianism] does not consist of knowing God but in doing his will.” Who God is becomes unimportant.

Next week we will look at Bavinck’s analysis of God’s incomprehensibility in the shift from theology to philosophy.

“Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics” are Bavinck’s opening words to the doctrine of God. Even when a confirmed believer moves past the sophomore debates of faith v reason and proofs for God’s existence faith, moving toward understanding, faces the incompressibility of knowing God. The great question here at the outset of our journey is: How is reading Bavinck anymore of a help?

The tensions between modern life’s this-world scientific orientation and the pietistic other-worldly contemplation was a concern Bavinck was a pains to address. These two worldviews have inherent dangers to genuine faith; the former slips easily into asceticism and solitude while the other degenerates into, “cold Pelagianism and unfeeling moralism.” These issues, warns Bavinck, directly affect worship and the quality of religious life for those around us.

Bavinck writes with the conviction that God has certainly spoken and revealed himself to the creation from within and without. This is no mere academic exercise: God’s revelation is personal, inviting faith and communion with him through Christ and the Spirit. Our series continues with Bavinck’s view of God’s incomprehensibility right here, next week.

It’s been more than 2 months since we ended our year long series in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. We covered two of the volumes and some material from ‘Philosophy of Revelation’ and ‘The Certainty of Faith.’ As the new year takes shape it feels like the work is only half done. Personally I can’t read Bavinck without some sense of guilt for not sharing it.

So if we get ten positive  responses from those interested in more Herman Bavinck we will bring back the series. Please post “yes” to the comment field on this post between now and Friday for continued articles on Bavinck’s Doctrine of God (vol. 2). Cheers

I delivered a paper on Bavinck this year at the ETS annual meeting in New Orleans. It marked a full year spent in Bavinck’s theology. As our series on Bavinck comes to a close, we end on a personal note: Bavinck’s theology of certainty in the face of personal uncertainty and the trial of personal faith.

When the economy took a nose dive early last year so did we. I found myself out of work and our future plans decidedly uncertain. You can see where this is going. One of the greatest things about Christianity is its hope and encouragement when things look bleak. And it’s far too easy to criticize the message of the Gospel as a ‘hope for the best’ pat answer when life doesn’t go your way. This is a little different. The question I was facing was not so much ‘why is God putting me through this rough patch’ but rather, ‘do I really know what it means that God has spoken, sin notwithstanding?’ I began comparing my circumstances and my faith like so many believing Christians to “find God” somewhere in the mix. The meaning of ‘find God’ was what most professing Christians usually mean in the broad sense: finding the way out of the rough and striding on down the fairway. But I found something a little different.

For the true Christian, writes Bavinck, faith precedes certainty. Faith is never a shot in the dark. Faith is not irrational or random, or floating around in the air. One must first say ‘I believe’ before they can say ‘I understand.’ The object of faith is God: Knowing God as God. How is Bavinck so confident of this? so dogmatic about it? God’s revelation has permeated the world as deeply and as far reaching as sin has marred and obscured it. In other words the question for Bavinck is never ‘does God exist?’ but rather, ‘what is my relationship to him?’

I had wrestled with these questions in the classroom and now I was wrestling with them at home, at church, in the market place, and in my heart of hearts as well. Was I praying for deliverance for the sake of my career and place in the world, or was I praying to know God the redeemer and truly find his character in my actions and my attitude? Bavinck says true faith is always tested. Psalm 107 confirms it.

The contrast with faith and certainty is not always reason and ambiguity. These short meditations over the last attempted to cover a lot of the core content in Bavinck’s theology in the areas of faith, certainty, scripture, forgiveness of sin in Christ, and growth in faith and praise to God. I hope that in many ways the content of these articles last year was not the result of an intellectual exercise for its own sake, but is deeply concerned with contrasts: the contrast of faith and action, belief and understanding, theology and doxology, the stuff of life (Eph. 2:10).

Our last post looked at some of Bavinck’s opening words on regeneration. Self-awareness and self-improvement are to the spiritual life the first mile of a thousand. And, as far as east is from west, everyone has a little different idea of what the new birth is.

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When it comes to decision making, tomorrow often never comes. For Bavinck and the Reformed, this adage is too true for the Pelagian doctrine of regeneration. Assuming the final cause of salvation (faith and belief in the Gospel) rests in the ability to accept or deny most people won’t bother; the quality of the message waffles, and those who cannot exercise choice (infants, etc) are simply discounted from the conversation. On the other hand how does God bestow his grace to an indifferent and hostile world? The answer, says Bavinck, is simple.

The Holy Spirit is the cause of regeneration. He is not the instrument, say as a pen, but he is the author, say as the creator of the concept and the reality. The Gospel is preached and offered to human beings not as ‘elect’ or ‘reprobate’ but as ‘sinners’. This creates many conceptual problems which are not intellectual mind-games, but genuinely impact the quality of an individual’s faith in the life of the church body (or community). Bavinck’s treatment of the doctrinal development of baptism on this point is well worth consulting, especially as baptism physically represents all these issues in one tub.

There is more to life and salvation than just a Pelagian antithesis to saved by grace alone. In modern culture, perhaps in post-modernity as well, there will always be the notion that salvation, strictly speaking, is cultural improvement and social redemption. Self-aware spirituality is in many ways the height of being whereas Bavinck and the reformed see it as the minimal qualification defining a human being. Bavinck’s quote with a citation from Euken deserves to be presented in full:

When Christianity acts as a religion of redemption, it by implication assumes the existence of a sharp contrast between what humans are and what they ought to be. It expresses their inability to reach the summit by gradual self-improvement, and proclaims a transformation by elevation by an immediate intervention of the divine [Holy Spirit]. And this is confirmed by the general experience of the spiritual life. For it shows, “how the Spiritual Life is unable to find its necessary self-reliance in the world of ordinary experience; we have seen a breach between genuine spirituality and the world taking place; and we have seen how the effects of all this … toil in vain without an inner elevation through the energy of an absolute life.”

There is a lot at stake in describing regeneration and coming to faith. Above all is the certainty that faith is genuine, leading to eternal life; its hope valid, its conduct legitimate. The reality of rebirth in Christianity is certain for one long and historical reason. Upon serious reflection, theologians from Irenaeus onward had a difficult time explaining the change: they found describing this new life in the Spirit elusive, living beyond the formula of baptism. Can Bavinck solve this complex riddle? We shall see.   

The New Testament presentation of rebirth and resurrection is summed up in hope. Bavinck writes, “Hope characterizes [the believer’s] whole lifestyle … it is not a static possession, but living, active, and strong.” Baptism represents faith and renewal of the inner-person as conducted by the person of the Holy Spirit. There is a new perspective in the believer: they walk in newness of life obtaining justification, adoption, and gain the assurance of adoption through the witness of the Spirit (Rom. 8:15-16; Gal. 4:6; 2 Cor. 1:22). Rebirth has less of a connection to calling in John than found in Paul. In John’s Gospel, rebirth is a work of the Father, “who gave his own to Christ … even before his incarnation.” Christ was, after all, the Logos though not everyone recognized him or received him (John 1:5, 9-11). Now, if regeneration is a response to a call -a receiving of faith from God- and not a ‘work’ performed to merit eternal life, how does that work?

I believe, help me in my unbelief

The sinful will of humans is responsible for unbelief. Pelagianism does not work in practice, nor any similar view that ascribes the final cause of salvation to the human will; it introduces grace merely as the restoration of volitional choice. Unless the right choice is made there is no salvation for that person: one minute they are capable, the next minute they are not. And it’s more exclusionary than one would imagine. To say that salvation consists in the choosing excludes infants who die prematurely. From the perspective of the congregation, the interest of faith (choice) rests entirely in the competency of the minister to present the gospel. What if, one Lord’s Day, at the critical moment the message of the gospel was bungled and the meaning confused? The chance to choose was lost. So it is far better and correct to say that God grants his grace freely to sinners he chooses out of his holiness, mercy, and infinite wisdom. I am willing, said our savior, be cleansed, is the gracious attitude of the New Testament.

We are now setting out in volume 4 of Bavinck’s Dogmatics. Part 1: The Holy Spirit gives New Life to Believers covers faith and calling, justification and regeneration before dealing with the community of the church in part 2. Readers should not feel intimidated by the massive size of this book (940 pps. w/index) for one reason: application. As these few remaining articles hope to show, the sum of Bavinck’s theology upholds the industry of the gospel. Christ is preached; not to the elect; not to the reprobate; but to sinners needing redemption.

Sin had disrupted the world and wrecked havoc but humankind continued to exist. We owe it to the ‘external call’ of the law (vocatio realis), says Bavinck, that families, society, religion, arts and sciences have kept the human race from sinking into utter self-annihilation. But in terms of real salvation and divine calling, a calling unto fellowship in life eternal, this is only the bare minimum. The world, says John, did not know the Logos nor did it receive Christ (John 1:3, 10). The Gospel call (vocatio verbalis) of Christ does not cancel out the law mediated by nature and history but transcends it. How, you ask Bavinck? The Gospel is an invitation to faith in the grace of God, not an invitation to obedience to the law but is fully is accompanied by the witness of the Holy Spirit at work in the members of the church.

The tensions between law and gospel, faith and reason, accepting and rejecting, works, righteousness and so on will always be with us. On the broad spectrum between Reformed and Universalists one thing is certain: “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.” The trick, says Bavinck, is how to turn that faith into a reality. A problem is immediately raised once the God-appointed order becomes reinterpreted or flipped: preach a message that faith is produced in the choosing (created through human activity) and the gospel looses its certainty and definite character. Christ made salvation possible for anyone but not actual for no one. The imperative of salvation sinks to a moral example. Either God gives his grace or it evolves out of a long process of keeping rules and morals.

Can a pastor tell a dying man he has all the time in the world to believe in God’s grace? On the other hand not everyone accepts the message of the cross but rather reject it. Our next post will examine this willingness or unwillingness to faith in Bavinck’s masterful treatment.

Our ‘leap of faith’ here means that we have now jumped from mid-way of volume three (Sin and Salvation in Christ) into the beginning of volume four: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation in Bavinck’s magisterial Reformed Dogmatics. Some have suggested that faith is a ‘leap in the dark.’ In the movies, as in real life, this view of faith often comes down to the climatic moment that cuts the blue wire or dashes to the train station before she leaves forever. In Bavinck’s ongoing contest with modernism and the loss of objectivity, this idea of faith is pretty much disastrous for religion. There is great objective certainty in Deus dixit; God has spoken, revealing his glory in the message of the Gospel. But is it true for everyone? Bavinck’s reply has cause for alarm.

The one thing biblical theology is sure of is, “The Triune God produces all things in creation and new creation by his Word and Spirit.” The puzzler is how the call to faith has not achieved universal results. The outcome is in God’s hands, says Bavinck, which is not to say salvation is random or exclusivist. Far from it. The Gospel is delivered to sinners, not the ‘elect’ or ‘reprobate.’ When a person acknowledges the mystery of God’s will in salvation they gain insight into God’s glory. And like all spiritual knowledge, it must be given of God.

Soteriology has as many intellectual problems as the doctrines of the Trinity and two-natures of Christ. Regeneration proceeds faith is the correct explanation, but there are ethical considerations. For one, overemphasis on regeneration can lead people to feel uncertain about their faith. Infant baptism, for another, could be a presumption if personal faith takes priority. Arminian based views assuming that some grace is given to motivate the human will, or that the will can ascent to faith in God, ultimately deem the concept or regeneration unnecessary. This is a dangerous position in the modern era, says Bavinck, where concepts of moral empowerment gradually evolve from improved human character assume the meaning of ‘renewal’ and ‘rebirth.’ It sounds appealing, but it reduces God’s glory and sovereignty into the elephant in the room.

These theological problems are not intellectual fodder but go directly to faith as the principle of renewed life. For Bavinck, such theological assumptions affect the life of faith, and the quality of that life in direct, intimate communion with God in the Spirit. The mystery of God’s prerogative in salvation is as sticky as freedom, liberty and love. God’s grace is irresistible but is not coercive. It frees from the power of sin and it is created in love.

We’re taking some time off this summer but it’s impossible to put Bavinck down. A set of Bavinck is difficult to stuff in a backpack, or suitcase and taking it through airport security is a joke. Fortunately Westminster bookstore has reprinted a great little Bavinck title and it’s the ideal size for travel. In just under 100 pages The Certainty of Faith makes a deep impression on the value and importance of knowing and understanding theology for the pulpit and in visitation. Here is a short quote on the practical application of theology contrasted with those of other sciences especially the medical field:

The theoretical knowledge of a doctor is doubtlessly very important, but his worth and the worth of his science only comes into its own when he heals people. Similarly, theology must prescribe medicine for the ailments of the soul. It must be able to say how and in what way we can be freed from our guilt, reconciled to God, attain to patience and hope amidst life’s tribulations, and find reason to sing praises in the face of death. A  theology that does not concern itself with these things and only dedicates itself to critical and historical studies is not worthy of the name theology. And a theologian who is acquianted with all the latest issues of science but who stands speechless at a sickbed and knows no answer to the questions of the lost sinner’s heart isn’t worthy of his title and office.

In the previous post Bavinck suggested that religion has more of a connecting point to real life than people give it credit. Sacrifice was the hinge on which the everyday working life and the door of salvation turned in the ancient world. For Bavinck this is the stock and trade of all theology: the vicarious atonement of Christ. Dogmatics has (historically) had a difficult time processing and presenting this momentous truth, yet there is no doubt to its certainty. The humility of Christ assuming human nature supports this. Believing it, however, is another matter.

After studying the sacrifices of the Old Testament one might wonder if more ink has been spilled on the topic than blood. Christ’s sacrifice was puzzled over from Irenaeus to Anselm, and especially with the latter, no one followed without revision. The great theme behind the OT sacrifices is mercy. The sacrifices did not cover the whole of life, says Bavinck, they only served as a reminder of sin and typologically pointed to another, better sacrifice. How so? The Prophets (and those speaking in a prophetic spirit) teach the spiritual nature of sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22; Hos. 6:6) and promise the Messiah (Ps. 110; Jer. 23:6). Prophetic testimony, in the estimation of the New Testament, prescribes the Messiah’s human nature, humiliation, sufferings, and the priesthood in Christ’s sacrifice: the Old Covenant is fulfilled in him.

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The past three weeks have been spent on the Incarnation. All posts prior to these were an exciting prologue. The Incarnation is the very center of dogmatics and one must first understand the person of Christ before ascertaining what it is he does. Christ came to fulfill the law, establish grace, reveal the Father, send the Spirit, and atone for sin. And that just for starters. Bavinck says that this is an area which has seen little (satisfactory) treatment in dogmatics and for that we need to get busy.

There is a deep human need for redemption from sin and misery. Writing at the time of the industrial revolution, Bavinck notes that one of the greatest riddles of life is that it becomes shallow for all the cultural benefits streaming from civilization. The same can be said in the wake of a global recession. This is why there has always been religion. The needs of the human heart are greater than what culture can provide. It’s what sent Alexander the Great across Persia and subprime lenders on a similar campaign. All to say there is a wide array of civil and natural evils in the world which science and technology simply cannot hope to solve. As a general starting point, its safe to say that all ancient cultures and primitive peoples addressed the ‘problem of evil’ and the ‘possibility of redemption’ from evil and its affects through keeping laws, ‘divine’ commandments, golden rules and ratios, and above all: sacrifice. (more…)

Last week we attempted to follow Bavinck through the thick of Christology. He is an outstanding guide. Bavinck has insisted that the subtle nuance which takes Christ as a mere human personality steers him away from his place as the object of faith. This diminishes Christ’s teachings to formalities (and legalism) and constructs dogmatics as either a system of religious feeling or an ideal moral resource. This tendency does more than present formalities with little substance. For Bavinck it leads away from the life of God and renders the indwelling of the Spirit impossible.

The Old Testament anticipated the Messiah’s anointing of the Holy Spirit would be very unique (Isa. 61:1). Christ received the Spirit at baptism (without measure); the Spirit led him into the wilderness; gave him powers over spiritual authorities; and glorified his resurrected body (Rom. 1:4). He ascended into heaven, “to manifest himself to his own as life-giving Spirit who is the Spirit and who works by the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17-19).” This goes to the virgin birth, says Bavinck, for it is not miracle enough to be born of a virgin: it doesn’t prove sinlessness. Christ is not a product of humankind, but sent to humankind. He remained exempt from original sin by the conception of the Spirit, so he was truly the Son of the Father and not a natural descendant from Adam. The great riddle of the Testaments, the Messiah is both David’s son and lord, is solved in Joseph. Joseph is civilly and legally Jesus’ father who was able to contribute the right and titles of David’s pedigree. The conception by the Holy Spirit helps to explain Christ’s sinlessness. But the real beauty is that it was the only way, “in which he who already existed as a person and was appointed head of a new covenant could now also be born in a human way … and remain who he is: the Christ, Son of the Most High” (Polanus).

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Christology is not a dense jungle of theories. Think of it instead as a densely populated region of ideas and traditions. One quarter is made up of Gnostics; another quarter is modernist and so on. Navigating the data takes time and energy and after a day’s work one may wonder if they accomplished anything, or whether it matters. It does. This is the area of dogmatics, Bavinck would say, one needs to know where not to be after dark.

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We’ve paused to consider Bavinck’s discussion of eschatology as prologue to the incarnation. Its pretty serious stuff. It takes over the OT function of prophecy and recasts it according to fulfillment then sends it out into the world as the kingdom. How the kingdom looks depends on how one views the incarnation: they are inseparably linked. Through a careful discussion of modernist Christology Bavinck warns us against dividing up the kingdom by separating the historical Christ from the mystical Christ from the Synoptic Christ all the way down to the real Christ. We need to proceed with caution, says Bavinck, for this is not a fun academic puzzle with good grades and prizes: this is a battle of concepts, not words.

The incarnation of Christ has been a debate since the apostolic era. The subject is endless due to its very premise: the infinite God of the universe became a finite human being, how? Scholastics following John of Damascus attribute the divine nature occupying the human as heat does iron: it animates the human nature allowing it to participate in divine wisdom, power and glory. Lutherans differ a little, but the Reformed are looking to something with a more consistent explanation.

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Last week we struck upon several pages on eschatology before proceeding into a jam packed Christology. It has caused some serious reflection on our part, extra reading and evaluation, and the results are a postponing of this week’s column.

Bavinck’s analysis of the covenant of grace is quite moving. He stops several times to marvel at the beauty, the continuity, and it’s hard not to get choked up with him. So far Bavinck has mapped out the groundwork needed to be done by a mediator to God on man’s behalf: guarantee an incalculable debt of moral righteousness to the sovereign, restore the old covenant promises (life, eternal life), and pay for it all with an impeccable life and death. Of all the applicants for the position of God’s gift to humanity, there is only one man right for the job.

The doctrine of Christ is central for dogmatics, writes Bavinck, and it has its foundation and presupposition in the Trinitarian being of God. The Trinity makes it possible for the existence of a mediator who participates in the divine and human nature. A divine mediator is nothing new to world religion or popular culture from Gilgamesh to Neo. When Bavinck was writing nearly a century ago, he argued that an exclusive ‘history of religions’ approach overlooks the election of Abraham – the distinction that marks off Israel’s covenant relationship with God that eventually saw the Messiah into the world. The oversight results in looking around at various cultural myths of messianic figures. Bavinck argues this is the modernist way of kicking around the original literary form of Christ’s body from one culture to the next like a football. He’s right. Postmoderns do the same thing when they read the Old Testament descriptively rather than prescriptively.* Where did the idea for a divine mediator originate? The Medes? Assyria? Ancient Babylonia? Israel? The goal of dogmatics is to maintain the universal need for a mediator as self-evident. The rest, so to speak, is up to God.

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The best of all free advice in the world is always read the fine print before signing . This has saved many from the pitfalls and headaches of purchasing everything from lemons to credit. Many not most. But with the Covenant of Grace one should pay special attention to the details for a different reason. There are more blessings and benefits in the details than one might expect. How many? How much? Bavinck himself would say you won’t believe the price .

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There is much to be said in terms of praise for Bavinck’s Saved by Grace, the Holy Spirit’s Work in Calling and Regeneration (RHB, 2008). ‘Profound,’ ‘fine,’ and ‘superb’ are accurate descriptions of this volume and more can be said for Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (Baker, 2008). Given the long list of fine comments by fine scholars, on a certain level mine is more honest: if I had this book at grad school, I would have had better marks on more than a few papers.

Is the debate between infralapsarian and supralapsarian views of grace important? The short answer is yes. Exploring this rocky terrain is very difficult and, to push the analogy further, the study can be similar climbing Everest: a lifetime achievement for a mere three minute view at the top. What God was ‘thinking’ for his plan of salvation from all eternity is incomprehensible. At what point did he ‘decree’ to save his elect is equally unknowable even for three minutes. Christian theology and dogma often admits abstraction when explaining the decrees of God to create, redeem, and leave reprobate, all of which directs its focus on the doctrine of justification. As J. Mark Beach observes in his excellent introductory essay, the issue between infra and supra , Kuyper and Bavinck, is theological language that is potentially unbiblical and confusing.

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There is still plenty of time to register for the Great Bavinck Giveaway! Subscribe by April 20 to be included in the drawing for a free copy of Bavinck’s ‘Saved by Grace’ (RHB, 2008). See the March 16 post for details. Our last post examined the outset of the Reformed ‘Covenant’ view of grace. Bavinck suggests it’s the middle way between the high Roman Church and the Anabaptist view on the opposite end.

There is a ‘cog’ between transmitting grace and receiving grace for salvation. It is a very important cog. It’s where to place the first moment of ‘regeneration’ in the order of salvation. The question is: does regeneration happen before or after ‘calling’? Many within the Reformed camp assume regeneration happens before baptism and others similarly hold that it could also (not to exclude the former possibility) occur a few days into one’s life, as in the case of covenant children who die in infancy. That rule, explains Bavinck, is the concession that regeneration happens apart from the agency of the Word, or through the Word; it’s a matter of degree, not principle. What’s the point? The Reformed believe that grace is free: The Lord has instituted signs and wonders to accommodate the means of grace e.g. the Word and Sacrament which proceed from Christ by His Spirit. Sounds good, right?

On the other hand, argue the Anabaptists generally, the Sprit is opposed to nature. Regeneration precedes ‘calling’ through the Word. This means the Holy Spirit works directly, effectually, and irresistibly in the human heart in opposition to the Word or other material  means. The church, they contend, does not itself mediate grace. Nor does the minister directly convey grace to the believer. The scriptures for that matter do not contain the actual reality of grace, but from the Holy Spirit alone. In sales, it’s ideal to successfully cut the middle man. But in this case this is no way to save.

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Our last post touched on Bavinck’s theology of the covenant from his book Saved by Grace , (Reformation Heritage Books, 2008). From there we outlined the Reformed concept of salvation, rooted in God’s covenant, as the middle way when compared to the Romanist and Anabaptist concepts of receiving grace and salvation. We now pick the conversation back up in Bavinck’s RD (vol. 3, ch. 5), for some initial remarks on the covenant as both the nucleus and the dividing line of special revelation.

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Bavinck’s theology is looking for life; to articulate it, to revel in it, and to encapsulate it especially as it is found in the certainty and context of divine revelation. One of the best characteristics of Bavinck’s work is that his polemics and theological controversy are never battles over words and the consistency of artificial constructions. He is looking for the theory that best explains and enhances our shared experience and has found it in the Reformed expression of faith and life.

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Our last post summarized Bavinck’s definition of sin as a non-physical ethical force that is not exactly ‘non-being’ but certainly strives in that direction. Death, the result of sin, was pronounced as judgment in Genesis 2 but there is more mystery and complication to this ‘death sentence’ than there is certainty.

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In our last few posts we’ve been plowing through Bavinck’s analysis of original sin and what was lost by the fall. Human beings did not become ‘sub’ creatures after breaking the covenant or works, but something changed. The original relationship and integrity with God was destroyed when sin took advantage of the commandment. Here is a brief look at Bavinck’s analysis of the nature of sin in what he describes as ‘mystery in variety’.

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Our three part series on the superadded gift (SG) was pretty difficult and challenging. This was especially true in our small group study but we’re still friends despite any differences as we wrestle through Bavinck’s analysis and (to quote Thomas Watson) the treachery of our own hearts. This post briefly recaps and reflects on Bavinck’s main points on the superadded gift.

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We’ve been looking at one of the toughest elements in Bavinck’s analysis, freewill and the origin of sin. The long debate between Augustine and Pelagius has seen many attempts at reconciling these views, most all of which fail to be convincing. Bavinck’s critique of Pelagius is masterful, but will his claims for original sin and the natural law prove convincing? We shall see.

Scripture is complicated. It places the origin of sin in the heart of humanity* despite all the provisions (donum superadditum) to maintain her original righteousness. God created mankind in his image, including free personality, especially in holiness with a special endowment of grace that was lost at the fall. The eventual development of the doctrine of concupiscence from Augustine onward, viewed the gift as something of a ‘remedy and a bridle’ to curb the ‘war’ of flesh and spirit. This ‘war’ is natural to man as an earthly and spiritual being, argued a cautious Trent, and once the ‘bridle’ was removed Adam and his descendants “changed for the worse”. Concupiscence is not itself sin – but is inclined to sin – and there is little difference in human nature pre/post fall except the need for grace which is infused into the believer in baptism (Bellarmine). For Bavinck this view of concupiscence as ‘weakness’ in human nature is itself a little weak, requiring the qualification, “that whatever is in man, from the understanding to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, [it] has been defiled and crammed with this concup. … the whole of man is nothing but concup.” (Calvin). For Bavinck, original sin consists negatively in the loss of original righteousness, and positively, the corruption of nature rooted in Adam’s trespass.

Original sin is not a ‘war’ between flesh and spirit per se and Bavinck has been clear that defining sin as merely sensual cannot account for hate, envy, or enmity towards God. Humankind is not a pawn in a cosmic eternal struggle between good and evil (Manichean/pantheism) nor is sin non-being but is ultimately dependent on the good for its temporal, ethical operations. Human beings lost the image of God at the fall – which is not a superadded gift, but integral to human nature. The image of God is “displayed the knowledge, holiness, and righteousness”. Sin violated the holiness of the creature; where one was able to maintain and produce righteousness, that faculty (the whole being) now yields the very opposite. They/we didn’t become ‘devils’ but rather than fulfilling the law of God, human desire instead runs ‘after the flesh’ which can no longer be justified (Rom. 3:20, Gal. 3:2). And that’s total depravity: the inability and incapacity of fulfilling spiritual good and deserving eternal punishment. How so? God still required absolute obedience to the ‘law of the covenant of works’ which righteous requirement was brought into the covenant of grace and fulfilled by Christ.

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* ‘creature’ is a better term because it encompasses angelic beings. Bavinck’s analysis is focused on Adam, but accounts for angels when relevant.

Our last post looked at the fickle problem of the origin of sin. Bavinck’s analysis of Genesis 3 holds that sin’s origin is not explained by the narrative yet it is described in historical terms. The fall of humanity is not itself having the content of the knowledge of good and evil, but the manner in which they would obtain it: apart from God’s guidance and care. So what was lost by the fall? A preternatural gift of grace? The image of God? The answer may surprise you.

Sin is a mystery. It has no right to exist; it has no substance, yet its fruits are evident on a universal scale. Despite sin’s self evident misery a concise definition and description of it is an enormous undertaking. Bavinck’s main objective is to prove that sin is not merely the sensual human nature, or merely a matter of freewill. If sin was purely sensual and carnal, envy, pride, hatred, enmity to God, etc. could never be explained. Human culture and refinement would eventually curb carnal or sensual desires, which is far from experience and contrary to the tenor of the divine covenants. What matters most is that sin is a possibility, phenomena that occurred in the human imagination (á Kempis) and came into existence through the rational faculty of the will in direct disobedience to the law of God.

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Our last post hit the mid-point of Bavinck’s Prolegomena.* His dilemma was choosing between three schools of thought that best explained life; paving the way for scientific certainty. These schools are: rationalism, empiricism and realism. For Bavinck, realism goes hand in hand with the presupposition that God has revealed himself in the world, and the best place to find this revelation is scripture. There is, however, a slight complication.

Dogma has its object of study the revelation of God in scripture. It assures us that God has spoken and that the church is certain in its creedal and doctrinal expressions of faith. When it comes to the problem of evil and the origin of sin there is no easy answer, and Bavinck himself admits that here, realism helps little. There are many angles at which to look at the Genesis 3 narrative and most of which fall short of the biblical meaning. An empirical approach might say that attaining the knowledge of evil was a ‘step of progress’ and beneficial to advancing civilization. Rationalists (i.e. Remonstrants, Pelagians, Socinians, etc.) have said that sin is never really sin, it’s just a choice in the will that sooner of later we can evolve out of. These answers are hardly satisfying considering that God does not have the empirical knowledge of evil, so it would have been impossible to become like God in that regard. As for the freedom of the will: it is free, but it is not always good (Augustine) and it is impossible to overcome sin by reason alone. (more…)

Is there a vacuum between science and reality? How is the object of God’s self-revelation introduced into the human consciousness? Herman’s answer to that question is depends on how you look at it .

Confronting the certainty of revelation and its scientific expression are three modernist schools of thought; rationalism, and empiricism, and realism. The mind and matter problem in rationalism unsuccessfully leads to an idealism contradictory to life and experience. “It does not,” argues Bavinck, “explain how and why every human automatically and spontaneously gets to ascribing objectivity and independent reality to the things preserved.” At the end of the day rationalism in all its forms and its given starting point cannot produce being.

If idealism cannot make the leap into reality, empiricism denies the immaterial world and leaves us with sheer materialism. Bavinck is noticeably more spirited here in his analysis. Empiricism does not account for immaterial concepts, or those truths not experienced by human beings such as logic and mathematics; and these things have dramatic impact on the material world. Further, in a qualified way, it is entirely unreasonable to demand that the scientist leave her feelings, emotions (passions) at the door before conducting research. These two roads, rationalism and idealism, are flawed just enough to hinder certainty and lead to inaccurate descriptions of life.

So what’s the solution? Bavinck says realism : the starting point for epistemology should be “ordinary daily experience.” For one, philosophy does not create the cognitive faculty; it simply finds it and attempts to explain it. The intellect is acted upon from the sensible world, and once the potential of the intellect (tabula rasa ) is active it immediately starts working according to its own ability (facultas ). What does Bavinck’s realism pay out? It brings us back to the principium essendi . God does not pack innate ideas into us at birth (Plato) or let us pry into idea of his very being (Malebranche), but instead displays his works of creation to the human mind. And there you have it: the groundwork to discuss general revelation. For Bavinck, and for all the sciences, this is not enough; we need the Logos that shines in the world to illuminate our consciousness and lead us from dogma to doxology.

In our last few posts we rifled through some of Bavinck ’s Prolegomena . His basic presupposition is that the knowledge of God comes through his own disclosure (special revelation, SR) and is contained in Scripture, which is the guiding light of theology. So, which has the ‘rights’ to govern and explain the content of revelation; philosophy (rationalism) or theology (realism)? We shall see.

In Part III of his Prolegomena , Bavinck discusses the Principia of dogma as a science whose object of study is independent of other disciplines. As a science, dogma is driven by its own content (SR) otherwise it would not be “a science concerning God (scientia de Deo ).” Against Bavinck ’s claim is the [qualified] rationalism (Kant, Schleiermacher ) that presupposes the content of dogmatics is dependent on philosophy to make its truths known; e.g., are dogmatic claims made through empirical or idealistic theories? Bavinck says neither , insisting in strong terms that philosophical investigation cannot explain, or stand at the fore of dogmatics as they question the very possibility of God’s revelation: the very foundation of dogma. If theology were to proceed on this course, it could never arrive at certainty. Supposing dogma gets its foundations from another source, the principle of dogma would depend on something other than God’s special revelation.

Bavinck ’s term “borrowed presuppositions” divides the central issue facing dogmatics: the faith of theology and the rationalism of philosophy. He does not, however, divide faith and reason as strikingly as say, Elohim dividing day from night and calling it a done deal. Instead he asserts up front, as he has so consistently maintained everywhere, that, “there is indeed some room in theology for theoretical reflection on fundamental principles,” so long as theologians do their reflecting within Christianity. The weight of Bavinck ’s point rests on the assumption that rationalistic speculation starts with a principle other than revelation and eventually works towards (or away from) faith. Bavinck does not use the term “borrowed presuppositions” to expressly indicate other worldviews ‘borrowing’ their philosophical framework, signs and signifiers from Christianity, and so far it doesn’t seem as if he is heading in that direction. For one, he’s less concerned about apologetics (cf. Bahnsen/Van Till), and for another he is clearing the study of dogma from the subjective “history of religion” approach that entrenched itself in the modern approach to theology.

It is so tempting to roll right into Bavinck’s discussion of the problem of evil/origin of sin, with the aim of demonstrating the consistency of his theory and practice. But our next few posts will at least draw a few more thumbnail sketches of Bavinck’s views on general and special revelation, before plunging into the deep problem of darkness.

The following was submitted by Matthew Holst:

Whereas Jesus came the first time to establish that kingdom in a spiritual sense, he returns at the end of history to give visible shape to it. The Kingdom of God is fully realized only when it is visibly extended over the earth as well. This is how also the disciples understood it when, after Jesus resurrection, they asked his whether this was the time he would restore the kingdom to Israel. In his reply Jesus does not deny that one day he will establish such a kingdom but only says that the times for it have been set by the Father, and that now his disciples are called, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:6-8). Elsewhere he expressly states that the meek will inherit the earth. He pictures future (my emphasis) blessedness as meal at which the guests sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … True, in this dispensation and right up until the parousia the eyes of believers are directed upward toward heaven. That is where their treasure is; there Jesus who is their life sits at the right hand of God; their citizenship is there while they are aliens here (Phil 3:20; Heb 11:13). (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol IV)

Now read this:

Postmillenialism is the belief that Christ, with His coming, His atonement, and His continuing regenerative power in those whom He calls, creates in His redeemed people a force for the reconquest of all things. The dominion that Adam first received and then lost by his fall will be restored to redeemed man. God’s people will then have a long reign over the entire earth, after which, when all enemies have been put under Christ’s feet, the end shall come, and the last enemy, death, will be destroyed. (R.J. Rushdoony from “Back to the Future”)

To me these positions seem utterly antithetical. Any thoughts?

I am thrilled to share with you that another gem from the pen of Dutch Reformed theologian extraordinaire Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) has been published by Joel Beeke’s Reformation Heritage Books and he and his staff are to be commended for it. The volume, which is comprised of material that originally appeared as articles in the Dutch religious paper De Bazuin (The Trumpet) from 29 March 1901 to 2 May 1902, is a feast for the soul (intellect, will, and emotions). We ought also to thank Dr. Nelson Kloosterman for his fine translation and Dr. J. Mark Beach for his editing and excellent introductory essay. Both of these men are shining lights on the faculty of Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, Indiana not far from Chicago. The book is entitled Saved by Grace: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Calling and Regeneration and it should be read by all students, ministers, elders, deacons, and intelligent laymen.