Whatever apostasy occurs in Christianity, it may never prompt us to question the unchanging faithfulness of God, the certainty of His counsel, the enduring character of His covenant, or the trustworthiness of His promises. One should sooner abandon all creatures than fail to trust His Word.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2008) p. 269.
For God, Christ’s satisfaction opens the way–without violating his rights–to forgive sins out of grace and so to justify the ungodly. If sin is of such a nature that “right” and righteousness, law and truth, do not suffer the least damage even when sin is not punished, then neither does the grace of forgiveness amount to much. But if sin is so enormous “that God, rather than…leave it unpunished, punished it in his beloved son, Jesus Christ, with the bitter and shameful death of the cross,” then the riches of God’s grace, the power of his forgiving love, come splendidly to the fore. Then, too, in the face of their accusing conscience, humans find rest and consolation in that satisfaction and can rejoice without any fear in the forgiveness of their sins. For a perfect satisfaction (atonement) is the guarantee of absolute, irrevocable, and eternal forgiveness.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 376-377.
A human being is all the more religious and all the more deeply conformed to the image of God to the degree that someone realizes and acknowledges his dependence on God more deeply. While all virtues can therefore be overdone in relation to creatures, no such exaggeration is possible with respect to God. One can never believe him, trust in him, or love him too much; faith can never expect too much.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 243.
The revelation of God in Christ does not ask for the support or approval of human beings. It posits and maintains itself in sublime majesty. Its authority is normative as well as causative. It fights for its own victory. It itself conquers human hearts and makes itself irresistible.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 505.
Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon dying in the ground produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the ‘bondage to decay.’
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 720.
Not the church but Scripture is self-authenticating, the judge of controversies, and its own interpreter. Nothing may be put on a level with Scripture. Church, confession, tradition–all must be ordered and adjusted by it and submit themselves to it.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 86.
Religious ideas are distinguishable from scientific concepts, among others, in that the former are not rooted in one’s own insight, in the authority of some human being, but only in the authority of God.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 85.
The content of faith, after all, lies outside of us and only becomes our possession by faith. The intellect is not productive but receptive and is made receptive, sanctified, and renewed by the truth that comes to us from without, from Scripture.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 64.
In the circle of the sciences, theology is entitled to the place of honor, not because of the persons who pursue this science, but in virtue of the object it pursues; it is and remains–provided this expression is correctly understood–the queen of sciences.
~Herman Bavinck~
Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 54.
The Old Guys 