by Matthew Gaetano

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), a major Dutch Reformed theologian, professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, and author of the profoundly erudite Reformed Dogmatics in four volumes, gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1908-1909 academic year. He had already traveled to the United States to meet B. B. Warfield in the early 1890s, but on this second trip he presented his lectures on the philosophy of revelation.

I am expecting these lectures to feature in future posts. Many of the challenges for interconfessional dialogue and the dialogue between Christianity and modern culture depend on the questions that Bavinck raised in these lectures. For now, as the Easter season comes to a close for a number of confessional communities, I thought that a presentation of some of his claims about the implications of Christ’s resurrection would be fitting. Emphasis is mine throughout.

There has always on a time of flourishing followed a time of decay and ruin for culture. Then God takes, as it were, the development into his own hands. … He demolishes the sinful development and raises culture from its abasement, and opens out to it a new road. This is particularly manifest among the Israelites, in Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and finally in Christ. Culture, therefore, sinks into the background; man must first become again a son of God before he can be, in a genuine sense, a cultured being. Israel was not a people of art and science, but a people of religion; and Christ is exclusively a preacher of the gospel, the savior of the world, and founder of the kingdom of heaven. With this kingdom nothing can be compared; he who will enter into it must renounce all things; the cross is the condemnation of the world and the destruction of all sinful culture.

But it is wrong to educe from this pronouncement that the gospel must be at enmity with culture. For although the gospel limits itself to the proclaiming of the requirements and laws of the kingdom, it cannot be set free from the organic alliance in which it always appears in history and Scripture. For, in the first place, Christ does not stand at the commencement, but in the middle of history. He presupposes the work of the Father in creation and in providence, especially also in the guidance of Israel; yea, the gospel asserts that Christ is the same who as the Word made all things and was the life and the light of all men. As he was then in his earthly life neither a politician nor a social reformer, neither a man of science nor a man or art, but simply lived and worked as the Son of God and Servant of the Lord, and thus has only been a preacher and founder of the kingdom of heaven, he cannot have come to annihilate the work of the Father, or his own work in creation and providence, but rather to save it from the destruction which has been brought about by sin. According to his own word, he came not to judge the world but to save it.

[…] For the same reason, the preaching of Jesus cannot be separated from what has followed after the cross. … Christ, who as the Word created all things, and bore the cross as the Servant of the Lord, is the same who rose again and ascended into heaven, and will return as Judge of the quick and the dead. In his exaltation he regains what he denied himself in his humiliation; but now it is freed from guilt, purified from stain, reborn and renewed by the Spirit. The resurrection is the fundamental restoration of all culture. Christ himself took again the body in which he bore on the cross the sin of the world; he has received all power in heaven and earth, and is exalted by God himself to his right hand as Lord and Christ. (266-67)

Bavinck argues that Christ came not only to condemn the corruption of sin but also to restore all things that He created as the Word of the Father. The fact that Jesus’s life is not characterized by artistic or scientific achievement is by no means a condemnation of those human enterprises; rather, Christ came to save his creation in all its rich variety (cf. 312). Of course, Bavinck emphasizes that Christ came to save individuals from sin, but here he also highlights the way in which the resurrection is “the fundamental restoration of all culture.” The body of Jesus that bore the sins of mankind could be the body that is raised from the dead and that now reigns in triumph. This reality transforms our understanding of the possibility of the renewal of all things despite the corruption of the world by sin. As Bavinck says elsewhere, “From the protevangel[ium] [of Genesis 3:15] to the consummation of all things one thread runs through the history of mankind, namely, the operation of the sovereign, merciful, and almighty will of God, to save and to glorify the world notwithstanding its subjection to corruption” (201, Bavinck’s emphasis). He expands on this point about the Resurrection and human history and culture in what follows:

The truth and value of Christianity certainly do not depend on the fruits which it has borne for civilization and culture: it has its own independent value; it is the realization of the kingdom of God on earth; and it does not make its truth depend, after a utilitarian or pragmatical fashion, on what men here have accomplished with the talents entrusted to them. The gospel of Christ promises righteousness and peace and joy, and has fulfilled its promise if it gives these things. Christ did not portray for his disciples a beautiful future in this world, but prepared them for oppression and persecution. But, nevertheless, the kingdom of heaven, while a pearl of great price, is also a leaven which permeates the whole of the meal; godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life which now is, and what which is to come. The gospel gives us a standard by which we can judge of phenomena and events. … Where could we find such a standard and guide if the everlasting gospel did not supply it? But it is opposed to nothing that is pure and good and lovely. It condemns sin always and everywhere; but it cherishes marriage and the family, society and the state, nature and history, science and art. In spite of the many faults of its confessors, it has been in the course of the ages a rich benediction for all these institutions and accomplishments. The Christian nations are still the guardians of culture. And the word of Paul is still true that all is ours if we are Christ’s. (268-69)

Christianity here is not made an instrument or mere means for cultural progress. But Bavinck as a Reformed theologian has no difficulty seeing the Gospel as a leaven for society, a standard of historical changes, and as open to all that is “good and lovely.” And this is rooted in Christ as the Word who created all that is good and Christ as the Risen One who condemned sin on the cross but also “glorif[ies] the world notwithstanding its subjection to corruption.” “All is ours” in the Word who became flesh, died, and rose again.

In his lecture on Revelation and the Future, Bavinck ties quite a few of these elements together:

For God is the creator and redeemer, but also finally the restorer and renewer of all things. The history of mankind after the resurrection of Christ is the execution of the judicial sentence which was passed on the cross, of the sentence which in Christ condemns sin and absolves the sinner, and therefore gives to him a right and claim to forgiveness and renewal. The cross of Christ divides history into two parts,–the preparation for and the accomplishment of reconciliation; but in both parts, from the creation to the cross and from the cross to the advent, it is one whole, one uninterrupted work of God. Christianity is as religion much more than a matter of feeling or temperament, it embraces the whole man, all humanity, and the totality of the world. It is a work of God, a revelation from the beginning to the end of the ages, in word and in deed, for mind and heart, for the individual and the community. And it has its heart and centre in the person and the work of Christ.

Christ occupies in Christianity quite a different position from that which Zarathustra or Confucius, Buddha or Mohammed, hold in the religion which was founded by each of them. Christ is not the founder of Christianity, nor the first confessor of it, nor the first Christian. But he is Christianity itself, in its preparation, fulfilment, and consummation. He created all things, reconciled all things, and renews all things. Because all things have in him their source, their being, and their unity, he also gather in one all things under himself as Head, both those which are in heaven and those on earth. He is Prophet and Priest, but also King, who does not cease his work until he has delivered the kingdom perfect and complete to God the Father. …

Jesus Christ came into the world to preserve it and to save it. This is the content of the gospel and the testimony of Scripture in spite of all criticism and opposition. … Between the world as it exists around us, with all its laws and all its calamities; between culture, with all its glory and all its miseries; between the human heart with all its aspirations all its pains; between this whole universe and the will of God as it is made known to us in the gospel, there exists a spiritually and historically indissoluble unity. Take away that will, and the world is lost; acknowledge that will, and the world is saved.