The knowledge of God as Bavinck says must always remain the knowledge of faith. And at the same time God has revealed himself in such a way that from revelation we can learn and know him by faith. This leads Bavinck to conclude, that if God’s revelation contains real knowledge, this knowledge can be thought through scientifically and gathered up into a system. (p8-9)
This system in general terms is the gathering of a particular body of knowledge into an intelligent, coherent, and meaningful ordered whole. (p9). And as a theologian who engages in this enterprise has the sole responsibility to think God’s thoughts after him and to produce a unity of God’s thoughts found in scripture. (p10) Of course this is done in the tradition of the Church, where the Church grounded in scripture and by the direction of the Holy Spirit will leave a legacy for the next generations of theologians to build upon. “To set Scripture over or against church teaching is as wrong as separating heart and mind”. (p12)
I think what Bavinck is getting at is there should be a certain organic growth in dogmatic theology, where the next generation builds and expands the knowledge of the believer using the best of the work done by previous generations.
Also it is interesting that Bavinck points that sciene, any and all science, is done with certain presupposotions. This of course includes theology. We can't escape our background, our up bringing, or our culture. These things influence how we think and what methodology we prefer.
ReplyDeleteI think this may be one idea that differentiates Reformed theology from other evangelical approaches.
ReplyDeleteMany of us "cut our teeth" as Christians in context where there was a suspicion of "tradition" and the individual pastor, or even Christian, felt free to develop his or her own ways of viewing doctrinal and practical issues. Often this was justified as relying on the Holy Spirit, but as Bavinck notes, God's promise was to the whole church, not simply to an individual, and certainly not to an individual who separates himself or herself from the Church. One of the blessings of our OPC standards is that they bring us into the broad, deep, clear orthodoxy that was recovered and expanded on during the Reformation, so that we don't have to start from scratch as we ask "what has God said?"