Ch2 Sect 6 Reformed Dogmatics

I think the first paragraph of this section illustrates the richness and strength of the Reformed Church and Reformed Theology as a whole. “The Reformed church is not limited to one country and nation but has expanded into various countries and nations, and its distinctive expression is not laid down in a single confession but numerous creeds” (p44) Also Bavinck remarks that the primary difference between the Reformed and Lutheran is that the Lutheran is primarily concerned with salvation, “How can I be saved” while the Reformed are more concerned with Glory of God and how can God’s glory be advanced. Even as Bavinck made this distinction some 100 years ago, there seems to be some degree of this difference and distinction within the Reformed as well. There are some who focus primarily on the doctrine of justification and tend to divide the biblical text between Law and Gospel. Everything that the Law demands is freely given to us in Christ. While this is true, and indeed should cause all men to Praise God and give a resounding Amen, I think Bavinck is saying the reformed faith can go deeper and gives a much richer understanding of God and His word.

Here is perhaps what distinguishes the Reformed from all other protestant traditions.

The Reformed understand the scriptures as giving us the following formula. Indicatives followed by imperatives followed by blessing.

Indicatives - what God has done for his people. By believing, or having faith in what God has done enables man to embrace God and His covenant.

Imperatives – the commands and Law of God so His people may know how to please God, glorify him, and maintain a covenantal relationship.

Covenant promises - the blessings that God is pleased to give his people as they keep covenant. Also we could include Covenant Warnings or threats, what God promises to do if we don’t keep his commandments

Also please note that repentance is a commandment from God so that when we do sin, we are still commanded to repent and promised forgiveness.

A great illustration of this which Pastor van Eyk preached on Feb 12, 2012 is found in Exodus 19:4-6

4)You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5) Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6) and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Indicative – verse 4 “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself”

Imperative - verse 5a “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant”

Covenant Blessing – verse 5b – 6a “you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6) and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

For a much better , deeper, and more edifying explanation of this great truth see the Sermon titled, “The Obedience of the Redeemed” found here.

Back to Bavinck and the reformed tradition. As we can tell through these pages the Reformed tradition has a long history composed of many men from different nations which resulted in man confessions. Also it is worth noting that has Reformed tradition moves forward in time, the tradition moves forward in truth. As each generation of theologians builds on the prior, the truth of God and His Word becomes richer, deeper, clearer, and more profitable for the soul. The doctrine given to us by Calvin have been greatly advanced and improved through the years by Bullinger, and the men who formulated the Westminster Confession. So on the one hand the Reformed Church must continue to press on and continue to articulate the faith and advance the truth, but on the other the hand the church must be aware of any deviance from her reformed roots. This is what happened in America, with emphasis on personal conversion, and a new life as characterized by a superficial perfectionism such as abstaining from tobacco and alcohol.

Ch2 Sect 5 Lutheran Dogmatics

Martin Luther who is known as the father of the reformation, the one who pinned the Ninety-Five Theses or disputes against the Catholic Church, was not, as Bavinck tells us the first Lutheran Dogmatician. That honor belongs to Philipp Melanchthon and his Loci Communes. However, Luther’s rediscovery of the Gospel of Grace, gave new life to the Church and provided the spark to the Reformation that had been building for years. With the reformation beginning in the early 1500’s and the Enlightenment or Age of Reason beginning in a hundred years, it is not surprising to see the influence German modern philosophy had on the Lutheran Church. Just as Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy by making the human mind the center of knowledge (more on this below) so did Schleiermacher who considered religion as the enjoyment of God in feeling, and a feeling that leads to desire for community. Just a side not, today there is a vast number of evangelicals who speak of the gospel as a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”, and negate any talk of the assembly of believers for worship, for discussion concerning “Community”. This Ghost of Schleiermacher is alive and well!

Immanuel Kant was the Father of modern Idealism and his contribution of philosophy was that of Transcendental Idealism. Kant was looking for the principle, the foundation, or better what are the preconditions for human intelligibility. Kant was following on the heels of David Hume who destroyed science and philosophy by asserting that “Cause and Effect” are not observed but rather are assumed by a habit of the mind. Hume suggested that we can only assume that the cause a cue ball has by striking the eight is the effect of moving the eight ball. There is no philosophical or scientific ground in which we can prove or base our knowledge the effect the cue ball has on the eight ball. How do you know that when the cue ball strikes the eight ball, the effect of the eight ball moving is not caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in Canada? You don’t see the “cause”, you can’t touch the “cause” or put it in your refrigerator. There is no evidence for the cause other than our mind expecting the eight ball to move once struck by the cue ball. With this line reasoning Hume essentially destroyed science and faith, since he essentially showed you can’t know anything and can only be skeptical about everything. Well Kant came along to save science and make room for faith, and he did this by turning Hume’s problem of the habit/imagination of the mind into the solution. Here is how Kant did it, I will illustrate in the following dialogue.

Hume: You can’t know anything, since cause and effects are just habits or imaginations of the mind. So we cannot know for certain that for any event A that B was the cause. Causations is not an empirical object found in the world, causation is just the imagination of the mind. Therefore science is dead and there is no room or need for faith. Kant: Mr. Hume, I have a solution, I can save science and make room for faith! Hume: How ? Kant: It is the mind that is the source of causation.

This is absolutely the most hilarious exchange in the history of man. What Hume says is the problem, “Causation is not found in the world, its just a habit of the mind”, Kant says is the solution. “The mind is the source of causation”. Essentially what Kant did was give to philosophy a Copernican revolution in thought. Just as Copernicus showed that the earth is not stable and everything orbits around it, but rather the earth is active, moving, in an orbit of its own, Kant similarly wanted to demonstrate that the mind is not passive in receiving knowledge but rather the mind is active and constructing knowledge through our experiences. The empiricists on hand such as Hume, Lock, Berkley would say that all knowledge could be traced back to an experience, the rationalist such as Descarte, Spinoza, Leibniz would maintain that knowledge can be traced to innate ideas, or some combination of experience and innate ideas. Its not, that the mind that conforms to object’s out in the world, but the objects conform to the understanding of the mind. The mind is active in constructing knowledge. We don’t know things in the world as they really are, we know them as our mind actively provides information about objects. Just a side not, notice this is an anti-realism strain of thought. Because we don’t know things as they really are, we only know things as they appear to us by the active intellect of the mind.

So that is how Kant saved science, now what about faith? He maintained there was a God, and that there was a spiritual realm, but we could not know anything about it, because the mind can only construct knowledge as we experience and come into contact with physical objects. But we all have a feeling of duty and morality, and there is where he made room for faith. His philosophy has been summed up by the following, “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me”.

So what does all this have to do with Lutheranism? Well, Scheielermacher took Kant’s philosophy baptized it and came up with his theology of God in feeling, and true pietism is a feeling of utter dependence on God. Since there are know objective truths to be known, all we have to go on is feeling. This is of course is a far cry to where Martin Luther begun the reformation on the objective truth that salvation from God is revealed in the Bible Alone, which is by God’s Grace Alone, received by Faith Alone, in Christ Alone, all to God’s Glory Alone.

Ch 2 Sec 4 Roman Catholic Dogmatic Theology

After the Great Schism with the East, the Roman Catholic Church began to flourish with the birth of new universities which led to a scientific methodology using the scholastic method. The scholastic method, or scholasticism, is a method of thought employing “dialectical reasoning”. Dialectical reasoning is the process of making logical inferences through a sort of question and answer dialogue. The typical scholastic formula would be something as follows:

Question “Does God Exist?”

The Scholastic then would provide the opponents view and reasons why God does not exist. Then, the Scholastic would site an authoritative source to support his own inference or conclusion why God does exist.

The scholastic method had a very logical foundation and a very philosophical nature, but as Bavinck remarks, this method lost its connection to scripture as theologians focused more on Greek Philosophy than the original Greek New Testaments manuscripts. This caused theology to loose its certainty and mysticism began to creep into dogmatics. Rather than starting with God and His word, and then using any insight that may be helpful from philosophy to construct a system of dogma, the pre-reformation Scholastics would start with Plato or Aristotle as primary and foundational in thought, and then attempt to baptize that philosophy into God’s word. Perhaps the best of the Scholoastics, at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church, was Thomas Aquinas, which Bavinck himself uses greatly, although Bavinck does inform us that Thomas himself was not free of unhealthy mysticism. As mysticism crept into Roman Catholic Theology through the middle-ages and into the modern period, so also did the attacks from secular philosophy. This led Rome to begin to condemn modern philosophy and finally in 1879 Pop Leo XIII acclaimed Thomas as the teaching doctor of the Church. Which was good in one manner, this would hedge of any modern speculative philosophy and post modern relative philosophy, but still is stuck in pre-modern thought and mysticism.

Ch2 Sect 3 From Constantine to Augustine to the Middle Ages

“With the coming of the Christian Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Toleration (AD 313), external pressure was replaced by the internal pressure of heresy in the church.” (p 35) At this point in the Church history further clarification and dogmatic development came from several councils in the east, such as the Council of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) where Christological formulations were constructed such as Christ being one person(specifically the 2nd Person of the Trinity) with two natures, divine and human. As debates in the church continued through the first millennium there became a difference in doctrinal emphasis between the East and West. The East was dominated by the corruption of humanity and the liberation by Christ which makes us partakers of life, immorality, and the divine nature. While the West thought of the relationship between God and man in more legal categories. Bavinck points out that the East followed and associated themselves with the teaching of John, while the West with Paul. The final difference between the East and West that caused the schism of 1054 was the filioque controversy .Filioque, which is latin for “and from the Son”, was a division over the Nicene creed which originally stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Later the church in the West added, “and from the Son”, which we as protestants affirm as well (Rom 8:10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 1 Cor 15:45 “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.)

I think this background concerning the church in the East and West that Bavinck provides, is to highlight and emphasize the work of Augustine in the late 4th and early 5th century. Bavinck on page 37 says, “This entire dogmatic development in the East and West culminates in Augustine. The doctrine of the Trinity and Christology of the Eastern theologians was all absorbed and, over a lifetime of rich experience, internally appropriated by Augustine.” Augustine’s point of departure is the human souls’ quest for truth, happiness and goodness which all are one. The knowledge of the self and the knowledge of God are the two poles between which all human thought oscillates. This is exactly the same point of departure for John Calvin in his Institutes. In the first paragraph of the fist Chapter of the Institutes Calvin says. “Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.” I think this illustrates the magnitude of the work of Augustine. Augustine provides foundational doctrine concerning the Church, predestination and Grace. Bavinck states that Augustine is a Theologian of greatest importance for all theological work that comes after him and is the most Christian and most modern of all the early church fathers. Every reformation returns to Augustine and Paul. (p38) And at the same time Augustine is known as Saint Augustine by the Catholic Church.

Ch 2 Sect 2 Dogma in the Early Church

During the era of the early Church Fathers dogmas were articulated as simple creeds, which focused more on the holy life. Analytical reflection upon the gospel was secondary to the practice of Christian ethics, such as love, meekness, humility, etc…

Eventually the church began facing opposition beyond hatred and mockery. Christianity was being attacked scientifically as Bavinck says “in a manner not unlike present day opposition”, which is followed by an editorial footnote mentioning works for today’s atheists such as Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation and Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. Although the scientific polemic did not overcome Christianity, many pagans began to combine pagan philosophies with Christianity. The greatest influence of which was Gnosticism. Fundamentally the Gnostics believed that secret knowledge was the only way to Salvation, and you could only gain access to this knowledge through mystical intellectual exercises. Also the Gnostics view matter as evil and spiritual as good that when applied or combined to Christianity denies the human nature of Jesus, and that God’s creation as good.

These attacks forced the Church to begin to reflect and analysis the content of revelation, and to formulate and articulate true Christian knowledge against all forms of false unbelieving knowledge. So as the Gnostics began presenting philosophies as a religious process, the Christian apologist accepted God and His word as supreme truth and the only philosophy that could unite all elements of truth.

Two schools of thought emerged as the Church began to develop a defense for the faith, an apologetic. One school, represented by Tertullian and others, was sharply opposed to philosophy and summarized their position with the saying “What fellowship is there between Athens and Jerusalem, academy in the Church?” Although Tertullian himself used philosophy by coming to a good necessary consequence from the plain reading of scripture when we began make some fundamental claims concerning the Trinity and Christology.

The Alexandrian theologians alternatively adopted a different attitude toward philosophy. Clement and Origen wanted to use the tools of philosophy to develop church doctrines into a speculative science. Ultimately what Origen wanted to do for Christianity is what Philo did for Judaism. Origen wanted to use philosophical language and categories of the day to articulate Christian truth. This runs the risk of collapsing philosophy into theology, where the distinctions of Christianity are blurred or even lost. But nonetheless as Bavinck teaches us by the 3rd century the church had assumed a firm position by rescuing the independence of Christianity, which set the stage in history for the great internal debates over the formulation of the Trinity and the God Man, Christ. The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople formulated these doctrines further laying the foundation for the Church and her continued pursuit of Dogma.

Ch 2 Sect 1 The Formation of Dogma

“The Bible is not a textbook of theology; its language is the fresh and immediate expression of concrete life. Dogmatic theology arises from sustained reflection on the truth of Scripture, and is the task of the whole church, not just of individuals.” (pg. 30) Dogmatic theology arises from within the church and here Bavinck wants to guard against two extremes, an over estimating of the church’s tradition on the one hand, and an under estimation or as he says “disparaging” of the tradition on the other

The concern with overestimating tradition, is that often tradition allowed pagan philosophy to influence and alter Christian truth. Some, such as Adolph van Harnack, would argue that the only way to prevent this influence was to reduce Christianity to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount and summarize the Gospel as “the fatherhood of God, brotherhood of man, and the infinite worth of the human soul”. This would be the disparaging of tradition, throw out all tradition, creeds, and formulations, except this new one that Harnack dogmatically introduces.

The Roman Catholicism is the example of an overestimation of tradition, where Christian truth is embodied in the official Church teaching. The official church teaching is manifested in Scripture and tradition that only the Pope can interpret. Ultimately then, tradition has as much authority and the man interpreting tradition has as much authority as Scripture.

The Reformation was on guard against both an over estimation and an under estimation of tradition. The Reformation would accept tradition, and creeds, and formulation, as long as they conformed and reflected the truth of Scripture. Scripture would be the ultimate authority for all dogmatic reflection through the history and tradition of the church.

Chapter 2: The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology

In the 1st chapter Bavinck has been arguing for a scientific, systematic approach to dogmatic theology. As he says on page 27 of chapter 1, “The content of dogmatic theology is the knowledge of God as he as revealed it in Christ through his Word.” So the content and object of study for the theologian is the Holy Scriptures, which provides the subject matter, such as the Doctrine of God, Doctrine of Creation, Doctrine of Salvation (Soteriology) etc… of study. This study is done by using what Bavinck terms the synthetic-genetic method whereby we don’t read verses, chapters, or even books of the Bible in isolation of each other, but rather study each verse, chapter, and book in concert with all of redemptive history. For instance, what God said to Adam and Eve about the promised seed in Genesis 3:15, has huge implications throughout each book of the bible and all of redemptive history.

This content and this scientific investigation can only be done through faith, by a man of faith. What God has spoken, man ought to believe is the backbone of faith. Also, this dogmatic theology must be done in from within the community of believers, the church.

The church is not only the believers of this present day and age, but the community of all believers from the beginning of history till Christ’s return. And here in Chapter 2 Bavinck, who was known for his brilliant scholarship in Historical Theology, stresses the importance at looking at the historical developments of theology in the Church. The church being an organic institution, ordained by Jesus Christ, is expected to grow not only quantitatively (number of believers), but also qualitatively in knowledge, piety, and worship. As Bavinck says on page 30 the Holy Spirit is leading and will not rest until the fullness of knowledge and wisdom of God in Christ has filled the church. So by building upon the work of previous generations guided by the Spirit, the Dogmatic Theologian will advance the truth and knowledge of God, for the glory of God, and for the good of the church.