Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1 Quotes

“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.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“Theology is about God and should reflect a doxological tone that glorifies him.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“The task of dogmatics is precisely to rationally reproduce the content of revelation that relates to the knowledge of God.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“It is, moreover, of the greatest importance for every believer, particularly for the dogmatician, to know which Scriptural truths, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have been brought to universal recognition in the church of Christ. By this process, after all, the church is kept from immediately mistaking a private opinion for the truth of God.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“When a church and theology prefer peace and quiet over struggle, they themselves trigger the opposition that reminds them of their Christian calling and task.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“People mistakenly oppose to each other the positions that have always existed side by side and become antithetical only by very one-sided overstatement”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“The difference seems to be conveyed best by saying that the Reformed Christian thinks theologically, the Lutheran anthropologically.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“Schelling combined an assortment of theosophical notions. Theosophy always occupies itself with two problems: the connection between God and the world and that between soul and body.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“In his Glaubenslehre (1840) he attempted to show that the history of every dogma is simultaneously its critique and dissolution.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“Schleiermacher has exerted incalculable influence. All subsequent theology is dependent on him.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“For Kant, only the religion of autonomous reason is the true religion. But by his critique of reason, by his appeal to the moral consciousness, his rigorous view of morality—a view that even made him speak of radical evil in human beings and of the necessity of a kind of rebirth—he has had great influence on theology.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“Factually and objectively, however, nothing is indifferent, neither in nature, nor in the state, nor in science and art. All things, even the most humble, have their specific place and meaning in the context of the whole. Human beings are indifferent only to what they do not, or do not sufficiently, know; they automatically assess and appreciate what they do know. God, who knows all things, is not indifferent to anything.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1 : Prolegomena

“Language is the soul of a nation, the custodian of the goods and treasures of humankind, the bond that unites human beings, peoples, and generations, the one great tradition that unites in consciousness the world of humankind, which is one by nature.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1 : Prolegomena

“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.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“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.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“The task of dogmatics, however, is always the same. It is and can, from its very nature, be nothing other than a scientific exposition of religious truth, a detailed exposition and interpretation of the Word of God. It is a laying out of the treasures of sacred Scripture, a commitment to the standard of teaching (Gr. παραδοσις εἰς τυπον διδαχης, Rom. 6:17), so that in it we possess a form and image of the heavenly doctrine (forma ac imago doctrinae coelestis). Accordingly, dogmatics is not itself the Word of God. Dogmatics is never more than a faint image and a weak likeness of the Word of God; it is a fallible human attempt, in one’s own independent way, to think and say after God what he in many and various ways spoke of old by the prophets and in these last days has spoken to us by the Son.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“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.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena

“Without faith in the existence, the revelation, and the knowability of God, no religion is possible.”
― Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena