Herman Bavinck

Bavinck: Faith, Works, and Assurance

Tony Reinke Assurance, Herman Bavinck, Roman Catholic

Some helpful thoughts taken from chapter 22 of Herman Bavinck’s Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans, 1956). Italics mine:

Page 474: “In justification we are declared free of guilt and punishment on the basis of a righteousness which is outside of us in Christ Jesus, and which through God’s grace is reckoned to us and on our own part is received in faith. In sanctification, however, the holiness of Christ is most certainly poured out in us through the Holy Spirit. When Roman Catholicism therefore speaks of a grace which is poured into us, we have no objection to that in itself; we object only to the fact that this grace is regarded as a part of the righteousness on the basis of which we are declared free before God. For, if that were so, then justification and sanctification, the deliverance from guilt and the removal of the pollution, would be confused with each other; and then Christ would be robbed of the perfection of His achieved righteousness and the believing soul of its comfort and assurance.”

Page 510—511: “The assurance of salvation is not something which is added to the life of faith from without, but something, rather, which blossoms up out of that life of faith itself. Hence, the assurance differs according to the measure of the faith… But all this does not take away from the fact that the saving faith, such as Scripture describes it and the Reformation restored it, is not in its inner nature certainty, and that this certainty becomes stronger in proportion to the extent that the faith becomes stronger. Such faith is not opposed to knowledge, but it is opposed to all doubt whatsoever. Doubt does not come up out of the new man but out of the old; it does not come up out of the Spirit but out of the flesh. The faith says yea and amen to all the promises of God, embraces those promises, and leans upon them. As it does this, and in proportion to the extent that it does so, the refugee confidence of the faith becomes sure confidence, and it gives the believer the freedom to apply all of those promises of God to himself and to appropriate them; the growing confidence becomes a sure confidence that not to others only but to me also the forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation have been given of God, out of pure grace, and solely for the merits of Christ.”

Pages 512—513: “But we must carefully note that in seeking for assurance we cannot begin with these good works, that the faith can never firmly lean or rest upon them, and that still less can they be performed by us with a view to our achieving the assurance of salvation by means of them. For all good works are imperfect, and they are more or less perfect in proportion to the extent that they issue from a stronger or weaker faith. But to the extent that they do issue from a true faith, they can serve as aids to our assurance. Just as faith proves and illustrates itself in good works, so the faith is also confirmed and strengthened by them.”

Incarnation-Centered Christianity

Tony Reinke Atonement, Herman Bavinck, Incarnation, spurgeon

Occasionally I’ll catch the Metro south and ride into the heart of D.C., jump off the train and hit the retro two-story Starbucks at 7th and E with just enough remaining time in my walk to finish my venti Americano before reaching the front door of the National Gallery of Art. It’s a great museum (over 30 Rembrandts, including a00015abThe Apostle Paul).

Inside the museum I’m struck by the number of paintings and sculptures that feature Christ, very often portraying Him as a baby. Popular are portraits of the nativity, and the virgin with the Child. This is a glimpse into church history. Study the writings of the early centuries and you’ll notice that the incarnation of Christ often trumps the crucifixion in its redemptive priority. But why? Why does the manger trump the cross?

The reason, says Reinhold Niebuhr, can be traced to the influence Greek and Hellenistic philosophy on the early theology of the Church. Greek philosophy centered man’s greatest need, not around freedom from personal sin nor freedom from God’s judgment, but around freedom from human finiteness. Man is limited in his humanity, and of course Jesus’s incarnation, rather than His atonement, answers this time-eternity question. Thus, being influenced by Greek philosophy, Christians like Gregory could write: “The word became man in order that thou mayest become a god.” It’s not uncommon to find Greek-influenced statements that point to the incarnational center of redemptive history and I believe you can pick up on this theme in modern literature like in the writings of Pope John Paul II (see his Redemptor hominis [Latin: “The Redeemer of Man”] for one example).

“The issue of Biblical religion,” Niebuhr writes, “is not primarily the problem of how finite man can know God but how sinful man is to be reconciled to God” (1:147). Very true. And when the center of redemptive history moves away from the atonement to anything else, we should be aware that secular philosophy is at the wheel determining the problem of man. And that problem will sound strangely different than the problem of personal sin, for which we need a crucified Savior.

You can read Niebuhr’s argument for yourself in The Nature and Destiny of Man (Westminster John Knox, 1941), in several places but especially in 1:144—147 and 2:59—60.

The incarnation, as glorious and magnificent as it is in the divine act is in itself, cannot be separated from the atonement. The connection between the two is unmistakable in passages like Matthew 1:21, John 3:16, Romans 8:3, and Galatians 4:4-5. Herman Bavinck insightfully wrote:

The incarnation is the beginning and introduction to the work of Christ on earth, it is true, but it is not the whole meaning, nor the most important meaning of that work. It is good to try to get a true understanding and a right idea about this, for there are those who think that the assumption of the human nature itself completes the full reconciliation and union of God and man. … The incarnation of the Son of God, without anything further, cannot be the reconciling and redeeming deed. It is the beginning of it, the preparation for it, and the introduction to it, but it is not that deed itself.

The nativity paintings are a good reminder of the historicity of Christ’s incarnation. But they are also a reminder that if we center redemptive history on the incarnation we will have missed the full scope of God’s redemptive plan, most likely misunderstood the holiness of God, and failed to understand man’s greatest problem and greatest need.

The Plowman’s Education

Tony Reinke General revelation, Herman Bavinck

“In Isaiah 28:26 we read that God instructs the plowman, teaching him how he is to do his work. But this instruction does not come to the plowman in writing, in so many words, nor in the form of lessons at school; it is a teaching, rather, which is contained and expressed in all the laws of nature, in the character of air and of soil, of time and place, of grain and corn. What the plowman must do is conscientiously to get to know all those laws of nature, and in this way to learn the lesson which God teaches in them.”

—Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans 1956), p. 65.

The Greatness and Misery of Man

Tony Reinke Herman Bavinck

From Herman Bavinck:

…The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him.

In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8).

Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God. (Our Reasonable Faith, pp. 22-23)

Introducing Herman Bavinck

Tony Reinke Herman Bavinck

Tuesday at Twin Lakes Fellowship, Dr. Ron Gleason presented an introduction to the life and writings of Herman Bavinck. His address is divided into six sections: (1) Bavinck the Pastor, (2) Bavinck the Theologian, (3) Bavinck the Churchman, (4) Bavinck the Man with Warts, (5) Bavinck the Statesman, and (6) Bavinck the Author.

An excellent summary was published by Nicholas Batzig here and audio of the address can be downloaded here or listed to online here:

Also, Gleason distributed two papers at the conference, including a helpful biographical sketch, which you can download here:

“Dr. Herman Bavinck (1854-1921): A Short Sketch of a Reformed Theologian, Pastor, Churchman, & Statesman.” [57 page PDF]

“Herman Bavinck’s Understanding of John Calvin on the Lord’s Supper” [32 page PDF].

Finally, Dr. Gleason has completed a full-length biography of Bavinck for P&R. The bio should be available by the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010.