Inspirational Quotes by Herman Bavinck
“Theology has, since Kant's time, become a theology of consciousness and experience and thus loses itself in religious anthropology.”
“No psychology of religion can teach us what conversion is and ought to be; the Scriptures alone can tell us that.”
“If there is no infallible Scripture "there can exist only a subjective and purely individual notion of what belongs to Christian faith." All ways are good, if they but lead to faith – not to what is contained in faith, for this differs endlessly.”
“empirical life is rooted in an a priori datum which does not come slowly into existence by mechanical development, but is a gift of God's grace, and a fruit and result of his revelation.”
“revelation always supposes that man is able to receive impressions or thoughts or inclinations from another than this phenomenal world, and in a way other than that usually employed.”
“By banishing metaphysics, materialism has no longer an ethical system, knows no longer the distinction between good and evil, possesses no moral law, no duty, no virtue, and no highest good.”
“science, which can make known only the interrelations of things, but never their origin, essence and end, will never be able to satisfy the needs of the human heart.”
“whoever intentionally robs himself of self-consciousness, reason, and will, extinguishes the light which God has given to man, annihilates his human freedom and independence, and degrades himself to an instrument for an alien and unknown power.”
“Metaphysics, the belief in the absolute as a holy power, always forms the foundation of ethics.”
“Darwin was led to his agnostic naturalism as much by the misery which he observed in the world as by the facts which scientific investigation brought under his notice. There was too much strife and injustice in the world for him to believe in providence and a predetermined goal. A world so full of cruelty and pain he could not reconcile with the omniscience, the omnipotence, the goodness of God.”
“The whole man is taken into fellowship with that one true God; not only his feelings, but also his mind and will, his heart and all his affections, his soul and his body.”
“The doctrine of evolution thus takes the place of the old religion in the modern man.320It is no science; it does not rest on undeniable facts; it has often in the past and in the present been contradicted by the facts. But that does not matter; miracle is the dearest child of faith.”
“the plan of salvation in the Christian religion determines the method of Christian theology.”
“If there ever is to be a blessed humanity it must be preceded by a radical change in human nature.”
“The peculiarity of the Christian religion as has been so often shown and acknowledged even by opponents,248 lies in the person of Christ.”
“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.”
“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.”
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Born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen, Drenthe, Holland, Herman Bavinck was the son of the Reverend Jan Bavinck, a leading figure in the secession from the State Church of the Netherlands in 1834. After theological study in Kampen, and at the University of Leiden, he graduated in 1880, and served as the minister of the congregation at Franeker, Friesland, for a year. According to his biographers, large crowds gathered to hear his outstanding exposition of the Scriptures.
In 1882, he was appointed a Professor of theology at Kampen, and taught there from 1883 until his appointment, in 1902, to the chair of systematic Theology in the Free University of Amsterdam, where he succeeded the great Abraham Kuyper, then recently appointed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. In this capacity -- an appointment he had twice before declined -- Bavinck served until his death in 1921.