RTS Papers / Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics / Fall 2018
CONCLUDING SUMMARY
What we have seen is a consistency among doctrines. A more holistic view of man will demand a more holistic view of sin and salvation. Because man has a Godward, internal, and external dimension, the problem of sin will be legal, psychological, and moral. Reformed theology has often emphasized the vertical reconciliation of the individual and God at the expense of the other two dimensions. Bavinck shows us a way to take all three without diminishing the traditional Reformed soteriology.
For anyone who thinks that philosophy does not affect theology, Bavinck’s profound analysis of the post-Kantian landscape is a valuable corrective. As one instance, the Kantian insistence that God can only be known by us in a moral (not metaphysical) sense, naturally fits with the insistence that God can only be united to humanity in a moral (not metaphysical) sense.
So the restriction on metaphysical theology leads to a consistent restriction on metaphysical Christology. Thus it is no coincidence that antipathy for classical theism tends to go hand in hand with a distaste for the Chalcedonian definition.
Bavinck’s call to return to the metaphysical sense of theology was a call to get behind and beyond Kant. He would not allow for any fideistic assent to the doctrines of the Trinity or the Hypostatic Union that is “just so,” but that could dispense with logical coherence. Of these two great mysteries he remarked that they are “philosophically justified as well.”
Infused throughout this work is Bavinck’s conviction that God creates all things (old and new creation) by his word. This is all possible because the Trinitarian economy is what it is: eternal generation in particular. Christ the word is the informing image, especially for human beings and their social interaction.
If I hardly treated Bavinck’s view of sin, suffering, covenant, law, redemption, ethics, the theosis doctrine, it is not because these are irrelevant to the question, but only because we must set our limits somewhere.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume One: Prolegomena. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Two: God and Creation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Three: Sin and Salvation in Christ. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Four: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008
Eglinton, James P. Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif. London: T & T Clark, 2012
Mattson, Brian G. Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology and the Image of God in Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. Leiden: Brill, 2012
O’Donnell, Laurence. “‘Bavinck’s Bug’ or ‘Van Tilian’ Hypochondria? An Analysis of Prof. Oliphint’s Assertion that Cognitive Realism and Reformed Theology are Incompatible” in For the Healing of the Nations: Essays on Creation, Redemption, and Neo-Calvinism, ed. W. Bradford Littlejohn and Peter Escalante (The Davenant Trust, 2014), 139–71
O’Donnell, Laurence. “Neither ‘Copernican’ nor ‘Van Tilian’: Re-Reading Cornelius Van Til’s Reformed Apologetics in Light of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics” TBR: 2 (2011): 71-95
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