Reconciled in Christ

For those who are in Christ, there is no wrath and no condemnation, but only peace with God and the hope of His glory.  Formerly, while they were still enemies and subjected to His wrath, God reconciled Himself with them through the death of His Son.  Now that God has put aside His wrath towards them and has given them peace and love, He will preserve them through the life that Christ now has in virtue of the resurrection and in which, as their intercessor, He is busy with the Father (Romans 6.8-10).  The resurrection of Christ thus goes on into all eternity.  In time, it brings with it the resurrection of believers, their regeneration, and the victory over heaven and earth.

Only when we understand this rich, eternal significance of the resurrection of Christ can we appreciate why the apostles, and Paul in particular, put so much emphasis on its historical character…

From: Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck; translated from the Dutch by Henry Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1956), pp. 371-372.  Dutch original first published in 1909.

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was Professor of Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam (1902-1920).

 

Sin and Death

The confession that death is a payment for sin, although it is not proved by science, is not disproved by it, either.  It simply lies outside the pale of scientific investigation and beyond its reach.  Moreover, this confession does not need the evidence of science.  It is based on the divine testimony and is confirmed, hour by hour, in the fear of death by which men, throughout their lives, are subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:15).  Whatever, therefore, may be said in evidence of its necessity or in defense of its legitimacy, death remains unnatural.  It is unnatural with a view to the essence and destiny of man in his connection with his creation after the image of God, for fellowship with God is incompatible with death.  God is not God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:32). 

On the contrary, death is altogether natural for fallen man, for sin, when it is finished, brings forth death (James 1:15).  After all, in Holy Scripture, death is not to be equated with annihilation, any more than life includes nothing more than naked existence.  Life is enjoyment, blessedness, superabundance, and death is misery, poverty, hunger, the want of peace and blessedness.  Death is dissolution, separation of what belongs together.  Man, created in God’s image, is at home in communion with God.  There, he lives, fully, eternally, blessedly.  But, when he severs that fellowship, he dies in that same moment and continues, always, to die further.  His life is deprived of joy, peace, and blessedness, and has become a dying in sin.  And this spiritual death, this separation between God and man, continues in the body and culminates in eternal death.  For, at the separation of body and soul, man’s lot is determined, but his existence is not over.  For it is appointed unto men once to die and, after that, the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).  And who can stand in that judgment?

From: Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck; translated from the Dutch by Henry Zylstra; reprint (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), p. 259.  English translation first published in 1956; Dutch original first published, under the title Magnalia Dei, in 1909.

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was Professor of Theology in the Free University of Amsterdam (1902-1920) and was one of the most important Dutch Reformed theologians of the early 20th century.  His four-volume Reformed Dogmatics has just been published in English translation in its entirety in recent years.

 

Herman Bavinck’s Theology

Three broad themes recur throughout Bavinck’s writings as a Reformed theologian.  The first of these, the subject of his Stone Lectures, is the philosophy of revelation.  In the face of the withering philosophical and critical attacks upon the historic doctrine of divine revelation, Bavinck worked consistently throughout his life from the settled conviction of the reality of the triune God who reveals Himself through all of His works in creation and redemption, and who has provided for an inscripturation of that revelation in the Old and New Testaments.  Reformed theology must build, even as the church is built, upon the sure foundation of God’s own testimony to Himself and the manifestation of His grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second of these themes is Bavinck’s emphasis upon the “catholicity” of the church and the Christian faith.  All truth, in whatever sphere or academic discipline, derives from a knowledge of God’s works in creation and redemption.  Reformed theology may never, therefore, fall prey to a parochial or narrow spirit that eschews the pursuit of scholarship or abandons the academy to unbelief.

A third and final theme that pervades Bavinck’s theological writings is one that he shared fully with his contemporary, Abraham Kuyper, namely, that “grace perfects nature” – or, better, that redemption involves the renewal and consummation of all creation.  The purposes of the triune God in redemption culminate not only in the re-creation of a new humanity through the work of Jesus Christ, but also in the realization of God’s purposes for the whole of creation itself.  Like Kuyper, Bavinck could not be satisfied with scholarship that does not seek to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.  Nor could he be content with the idea that any dimension of truth is separable from the truth that is in Christ, to whom all things in heaven and on earth are subject.

These themes, and the general outline of his Dogmatics, were to exercise a profound influence on such well-known North American theologians as Cornelius Van Til and Louis Berkhof.

It has been suggested, not implausibly, that Bavinck’s theology reflects a kind of “duality” that corresponds to his personal biography.  Bavinck was both the faithful son of the Secession of 1834 and the scholar who deliberately chose to study at the most liberal university in the Netherlands.  On the one hand, Bavinck endeavored to adhere faithfully to the authority of the Scriptures and the subordinate standards, or confessions, of the Reformed churches.  On the other hand, he read widely and engaged sympathetically [with] the best of modern theological scholarship and culture.  One could characterize Bavinck as, in these respects, a “man between two worlds.”  This duality in Bavinck’s life should not be overstated, however, since it expresses, in the arena of theological scholarship, an inescapable feature of the life of every Christian who is “in, but not of, the world.”

It can only be hoped that, with the publication of Bavinck’s Dogmatics in English, more readers will have access to the contributions of this remarkable theologian.  Although readers will not always agree with Bavinck’s conclusions, they will find him to be an outstanding model of Reformed theological scholarship – deeply rooted in the riches of scriptural revelation, sympathetically informed by the great confessions of the Reformed churches, instructed by the history of the church’s reflection upon the Word of God, and carefully engaged with the broad range of contemporary challenges to the Christian faith.  If readers learn anything from Bavinck, they should learn much about how the work of theology is to be conducted.  In a beautiful passage from his Dogmatics, Bavinck offers a glimpse of his understanding of his calling as a Christian theologian:

Dogmatics shows us how God, who is all-sufficient in Himself, nevertheless glorifies Himself in His creation, which, even when it is torn apart by sin, is gathered up again in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).  It describes for us God, always God, from beginning to end – God in His being, God in His creation, God against sin, God in Christ, God breaking down all resistance through the Holy Spirit and guiding the whole of creation back to the objective he decreed for it: the glory of His name.  Dogmatics, therefore, is not a dull and arid science.  It is a theodicy, a doxology to all God’s virtues and perfections, a hymn of adoration and thanksgiving, a “glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).

From: “Herman Bavinck: His Life and Theology,” by Cornelis P. Venema, in New Horizons, Volume 29, Number 9 (October, 2008), p. 5.  All emphases mine.  This is the denominational magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).

Herman Bavinck (December 13, 1854 – July 29, 1921) was the brilliant Dutch theologian.  Cornelis P. Venema is president and professor of doctrinal studies at Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, Indiana.