Quotes from Herman Bavinck

The peculiarity of the Christian religion as has been so often shown and acknowledged even by opponents,248 lies in the person of Christ.

From the start of its labors dogmatic theology is shrouded in mystery; it stands before God the incomprehensible One.

250Christianity is no mere revelation of God in the past, but it is, in connection with the past, a work in the midst of this and every time. All other religions try to obtain salvation by the works of men, but Christianity makes a strong protest against this; it is not autosoteric but heterosoteric; it does not preach self-redemption, but glories in redemption by Christ alone. Man does not save himself, and does not save God, but God alone saves man, the whole man, man for eternity.

Such a scientific defense of the dogma, i.e., of the entire content of revelation and of Christianity as a whole, is possible for the reason that nature and grace, creation and redemption, coming as they do from one and the same God, are not and cannot be in conflict.

Conversion is the sole and the absolutely peculiar way to heaven.

if sin bears an ethical character, then redemption is possible, and conversion is in principle the conquest of sin, the death of the old and the resurrection of the new man.

328An optimism which is exclusively built on evolution is always transmuted into pessimism if one ponders a little more deeply.

Men may differ as to the nature and the reach of conversion, but its necessity is established beyond all doubt; the whole of humanity proclaims the truth of the fall.

Scripture knows no twofold religious veneration, one of a lower kind and the other of a higher kind. Roman Catholics, accordingly, admit that worship (latria) and homage (dulia) are not distinguished in Scripture as they distinguish them, and also that these words furnish no etymological support for the way they are used.

If the essence of things is unknowable, the misery of man cannot be fathomed.