Now, when ascribed to God blessedness has three components. In the first place it expresses that God is absolute perfection, for blessedness is the mark of every being that is, and to that extent it is complete; in other words, blessedness is the mark of every being that lives and in living is not hampered or disturbed by anything from within or without. Now, because God is absolute perfection, the sum total of all virtues, the supreme being, the supreme good, the supreme truth (etc.); in other words, because God is absolute life, the fountainhead of all life, he is also the absolutely blessed God. In Scripture ‘life’ and ‘blessedness’ are very closely related: life without blessedness is not worthy of the name, and in the case of God’s children eternal life coincides with blessedness. Second, implied in the words “the blessed God” is that God knows and delights in his absolute perfection. …God absolutely delights in himself, absolutely rests in himself, and is absolutely self-sufficient. …God’s delight in his creatures is part and parcel os his delight in himself. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
Category: Herman Bavinck
The Dogmatician: “Further Up and Further In” or “Beyond Aseity to Independence” or “There’s Always a Bigger Fish: When One Attribute Swallows Another”
While aseity expresses God’s self-sufficiency in his existence, independence has a broader sense and implies that God is independent in everything: in his existence, in his perfections, in his decrees, and in his works. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: God the Archetype
In reality God, not the creature, is primary. He is the archetype [the original]; the creature is the ectype [the likeness]. In him everything is original, absolute, and perfect; in creatures everything is derived, relative, and limited. God, therefore, is not really named after things present in creatures, but creatures are named after that which exist in an absolute sense in God. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: The Argument for God is Everywhere
[T]o the believer all things speak of God; the whole universe is the mirror of his perfections. There is not an atom of the universe in which his everlasting power and deity are not clearly seen. Both from within and from without, God’s witness speaks to us. God does not leave himself without a witness, either in nature or history, in heart or conscience, in life or lot. This witness of God is so powerful, accordingly, that almost no one denies its reality. All humans and peoples have heard something of the voice of the Lord. The consent of all peoples is confirmation of the fact that God does not leave himself without a witness; it is humanity’s response to the voice of God. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: Nothing Is Atheistic
In an absolute sense, therefore, nothing is atheistic. And this witness of Scripture is confirmed on every side. There is no atheistic world. There are no atheistic peoples. Nor are there atheistic persons. The world cannot be atheistically conceived since in that case it could not be the work of God but would have to be the creation of an anti-god. …There is nobody able, absolutely and with logical consistency, to deny God’s knowability and hence his revelation. Agnosticism itself is proof of this point: like skepticism, it cannot maintain itself except with the aid of what it opposes. And precisely because the world cannot be conceived as godless, there are no atheistic and areligious peoples. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Hard Labor of Unbelief
Belief in a personal God is both natural and normal; it arises in human consciousness spontaneously and universally. Unbelief requires enormous effort. There is not proof available to it. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: Theology Should Be Relentlessly Theological, and Thus, Doxological
So then, the knowledge of God is the only dogma, the exclusive content, of the entire field of dogmatics. All the doctrines treated in dogmatics—whether they concern the universe, humanity, Christ, and so forth—are but the explication of the one central dogma of the knowledge of God. All things are considered in light of God, subsumed under him, traced back to him as the starting point. Dogmatics is always called upon to ponder and describe God and God alone, whose glory is in creation and re-creation, in nature and grace, in the world and in the church. It is the knowledge of him alone that dogmatics must put on display.
By pursuing this aim, dogmatics does not become a dry and academic exercise, without practical usefulness for life. The more it reflects on God, the knowledge of whom is its only content, the more it will be moved to adoration and worship. Only if it never forgets to think and speak about matters rather than about mere words, only if it remains a theology of facts and does not degenerate into a theology of rhetoric, only then is dogmatics as the scientific description of the knowledge of God also superlatively fruitful for life. The knowledge of God-in-Christ, after all, is life itself (Ps. 89:16; Isa. 11:9; Jer. 31:34; John 17:3). For that reason Augustine desired to know nothing other and more than God and himself. ‘I desire to know God and the soul. Nothing more? No: nothing at all.’ —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: Knowable, but Incomprehensible!
Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. To be sure, the term “mystery” in Scripture does not mean an abstract supernatural truth in the Roman Catholic sense. Yet Scripture is equally far removed from the idea that believers can grasp the revealed mysteries in a scientific sense. In truth, the knowledge that God has revealed of himself in nature and Scripture far surpasses human imagination and understanding. In that sense it is all mystery with which the science of dogmatics is concerned, for it does not deal with finite creatures, but from beginning to end looks past all creatures and focuses on the eternal and infinite One himself. From the very start of its labors, it faces the incomprehensible One. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: Fresh Bread, Thousands of Years Old
It [the Bible] always speaks of the highest and holiest things, of eternal and invisible matters, in a human way. Like Christ, it does not consider anything human alien to itself. But for that reason it is a book for humanity and lasts till the end of time. It is old without ever becoming obsolete. It always remains young and fresh; it is the word of life. The word of God endures forever. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: The Shadows Bring Out the Light
But in order to paint a full-length portrait of this image of Christ, human sin and satanic lies in all their horror would have to be pictured as well. Shadows are needed in this portrait in order to bring out the light more brilliantly. Sin, also when it occurs in the biblical saints, must be called sin, and error may not be excused even in them. And as the revelation of God in Christ incorporates unrighteousness within itself as antithesis, so also it does not spurn to include elements of hu-man weakness and human nature. Christ counted nothing human as alien to himself; and Scripture does not overlook even the most minor concerns of daily life (2 Tim. 4:13). Christianity is not antithetically opposed to that which is human but is its restoration and renewal. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
No Other Boast 