Quotes from Herman Bavinck

The central facts of the incarnation, satisfaction, and resurrection are the fulfillment of the three great thoughts of the Old Covenant, the content of the New Testament, the Kerygma of the Apostles, the foundation of the Christian Church, the marrow of its history of dogma and the centre of the history of the world.

one thread runs through the history of mankind, namely, the operation of the sovereign, merciful, and almighty will of God, to save and to glorify the world notwithstanding its subjection to corruption.

Society has already become a most artificial system of complicated relations, a gigantic organism, wherein all members are closely connected. All this demands help from the allembracing state.

G OD, the world and man are the three realities with which all science and all philosophy occupy themselves. The conception which we form of them and the relation in which we place them to one another determine the character of our view of the world and of life, the content of our religion, science, and morality.

311eschatology lives in the heart of all.

One arrives at metaphysics, at a philosophy of religion, only if from another source one has gained the certainty that religion is not just an interesting phenomenon—comparable to belief in witches and ghosts—but truth, the truth that God exists, reveals himself, and is knowable.

The notion that all peoples are on the road to progress is as incorrect as that they are continuously declining and degenerating.

Without God all things go wrong, both in our living and in our thinking. The denial of the existence of God means the elevation of the creature into the place of God.

primitive man has never existed; he is nothing but a poetical creation of monistic imagination

The condition in which the pagan world dwells outside of the special revelation is portrayed in Holy Scripture as darkness, ignorance, self-invented wisdom, and great unrighteousness. The preaching that addresses them is thus a calling to come out of darkness into the light; it is an invitation to be converted from idols and to serve the living and true God.

In case a dogma is not based on divine authority, it is wrong to call it by that name, and it should not have a place in the faith of the church.

157Openly or secretly all turn back to an inborn disposition, to a religio insita.

Life often mocks every system; it is richer and fuller than the deepest thinker in all his wisdom can imagine.

The superhuman task of transforming present society into a state of peace and joy requires more than ordinary human power; if God himself does not work the change, hope can be cherished only when human power is divinized.

The gospel gives us a standard by which we can judge phenomena and events; it is an absolute measure which enables us to determine the value of the present life; it is a guide to show us the way in the labyrinth of the present world; it raises us above time, and teaches us to view all things from the standpoint of eternity.

The parallel, rather, is with human language. It is human to have the ability to speak, an essential part of the image of God in us. Nonetheless, concrete language, which exists in countless forms, is not native but acquired; it is learned.

Like all knowledge, knowledge of God is mediated to us through our senses, through speech and symbol, mediated to us by parents and others. If this were not the case, we would be unable to account for the great diversity of representations of God. If knowledge of God, of the moral order, of the beautiful—if these were all innate, they would be universally identical and acknowledged as such.

In the same way, any ethical system which aspires to be true ethics and to bear a normative and teleological character, not falling into merely a description of habits and customs, is forced to seek the support of metaphysics.

All religion is supernatural, and rests upon the presupposition that God is distinct from the world and yet works in the world.

There is enough light for those who only desire to see and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition. There is enough clarity to illumine the elect and enough darkness to humble them. There is enough darkness to render the reprobate sightless and enough clarity to condemn them and to render them inexcusable.

Christian ethics maintains that the whole man must be good in intellect and will, heart and conscience. To do good is a duty and a desire, a task and a privilege, and thus the work of love. Love is therefore the fulfilling of the law.

When God binds Himself to being our God, then at the same time He binds Himself to be the God of our seed. With His grace He follows the line of the generations. He executes election along the route and pathway of the covenant. As Father of all mercies He walks the path that He Himself, as Father of everything, has drawn.

The essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and re-created by the grace of the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God.

Atheism is not proper to man by nature, but develops at a later stage of life, on the ground of philosophical reflection; like scepticism, it is an intellectual and ethical abnormality, which only confirms the rule. By nature every man believes in God.