Herman Bavinck: The Opposition Against Scripture and Christ

12 Mar

If Scripture is the account of the revelation of God in Christ, it is bound to arouse the same opposition as Christ himself who came into the world for judgement and is “set for the fall and rising of man” [Luke 2:34]. He brings separation between light and darkness and reveals the thoughts of many hearts. Similarly Scripture is a living and active word, a “discerner” of the thoughts and intentions of the heart [cf. Heb. 4:12]. It not only was inspired but is still “God-breathed” and “God-breathing.” Just as there is much that precedes the act of inspiration (all the activity of the Holy Spirit in nature, history, revelation, regeneration), so there is much that follows it as well. Inspiration is not an isolated event. The Holy Spirit does not, after the act of inspiration, withdraw from Holy Scripture and abandon it to its fate but sustains and animates it and in many ways brings its content to humanity, to its heart and conscience. By means of Scripture as the word of God, the Holy Spirit continually wars against the thoughts and intentions of the “unspiritual” person. By itself, therefore, it need not surprise us in the least that Scripture has at all times encountered contradiction and opposition. Christ bore a cross, and the servant [Scripture] is not greater than its master. Scripture is the handmaiden of Christ. It shares in his defamation and arouses the hostility of sinful humanity.

~Herman Bavinck~


Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 439-440.

Books by Herman Bavinck

Biography of Herman Bavinck

Other Bavinck Quotes

One Response to “Herman Bavinck: The Opposition Against Scripture and Christ”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Opposing Scripture « The Wanderer - March 13, 2012

    […] The Old Guys. Rate this: Share this:TwitterFacebookEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: