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
Tag: Herman Bavinck
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: 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
They Hate the Scriptures because They Hate the Author and Subject
By itself, therefore, it need not surprise us in the least that Scripture has at all times encountered contradiction and opposition. Christ bore a cross, and the servant [Scripture] is not greater than its master. Scripture is the handmaiden of Christ. It shares in his defamation and arouses the hostility of sinful humanity. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Dogmatician: No One Rejects the Scriptures for Intellectual Reasons
Whether revelation is accepted or not is decided by our whole life-and-worldview. Decisive here is not historical criticism but self-criticism, not science but faith, not the head but the heart. Also obduracy comes out of the heart (cf. Mark 7:22). Our thinking is rooted in our being. ‘What you do follows from what you are’ (Operari sequitur esse—Schopenhauer). ‘Your choice of philosophy depends on the person you are. Our ideology is often only the history of our heart’ (Fichte). —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
No Other Boast 