'Tis Done!

I've just finished reading the second volume of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation. Hence 'Tis Done!

Say something nice about Herr Bavinck's book.
Very comprehensive. If you want to know what the position of Reformed Theology is on the doctrine of God and/or Creation this is the one volume that will do it for you.

Now tell us what you really think!
There are just too many pages describing positions in theology and philosophy that Reformed Theology will disagree with. I know that Deism and Pantheism are wrong, I don't need to read about why they are wrong under every heading.

If you want to read a really good book on the doctrine of God, you should try Gerald Bray's volume of that title in the IVP Contours of Christian Theology series (pub 1993). At 251 pages of text, plus some notes and suggested further reading, this is a far more accessible and useful volume than Bavinck. Bray covers the doctrine of God, which to be fair is only the first three parts (432 pages) of Bavinck. But he does it so much better.

So, 'tis done! That's another book ticked off my reading targets list for 2010, and the first of my major volumes. I'm really looking forward to starting Larry Hurtado's 'Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity'. This theology is all very well but just not as much fun as biblical studies.

I'm going to replace Bavinck on the reading targets list with Gordon Fee's 'God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul' (pub 1994). Just in case Hurtado doesn't turn out to do enough detailed exegesis of the text Fee won't let me down. But I'm not aiming to get to Fee until the summer, unless Hurtado ends up being a better page turner than Dan Brown.

Bavinck on The Trinity

There is a really good section in Bavinck, vol 2, when he discusses the development of trinitarian dogma.
ok, I suppose the history of doctrine isn't everyone's thing, but this is really good and well worth reading.

From the very outset [which for Bavink is the Apostolic Fathers of the late first, early second century] it is clear that the dogma of the Trinity was not born from philosophical reasoning about the nature of God, but from reflection on the facts of revelation, specifically on the person and work of Christ. From the beginning it revolved around the deity of Christ, the absolute character of Christianity, the truth of the revelation of God, the true atonement from sin, and the absolute certainty of salvation. (p. 280)

Notice the foundations upon which, according to Bavinck, the doctrine of the Trinity rests:
> the facts of revelation - that is Scripture and its witness to God;
> the person and work of Christ - we cannot read the gospels or the New Testament without asking the disciples question, 'Who is this man?', and we find the language and themes of Scripture drive us ever more towards divinity in answering this question;
> the deity of Christ, the NT leaves us no where else to go;
> the absolute character of Christianity - in part I'm posting this to ask if anyone knows what this might mean!
> the truth of the revelation of God, see above;
> the true atonement from sin - the inclusion of the atonement here I found unexpected, and yet, when we read of the atonement from sin and how this was accomplished in the cross of Christ we must again reflect upon the nature of Christ and of God;
> the absolute certainty of salvation - an assurance of salvation also leads us to reflect upon God and so will take us into an understanding of the Trinity.

The Trinity is not some philosophical add on to a 'simple' Christianity, but the very heart beat of a catholic, ecumenical faith. As the Athanasian Creed, which in large part is an exposition of the Trinity, concludes:

 This is the catholic faith, which except a man shall have believed faithfully and firmly he cannot be in a state of salvation.

Theological Humility

I'm reading (ploughing my way slowly through) vol 2 of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics on God and Creation.

In a long-ish discussion of the Sovereignty of God and God's will and nominalism I came across the following:

Every scientific discipline is bound to its object; it may not - for the sake of some preconceived theory - falsify or deny the phenomena it observes.
So also theology is strictly tethered to the facts and evidences that God discloses in nature and Scripture. It must let these facts and evidences stand unimpaired and unmutilated. When it cannot explain them, it must acknowledge its ignorance. p. 239, emphasis added.

It appears that for some God's will is a foundation beyond which one cannot and need not press, however, for others there is much that can be said about this.

What interested me was Bavinck's plea for some theological humility. All we can do is receive the revelation God gives us and do our best to understand and submit to it. We do not invent or imagine God or the gospel and must submit to the limits of revelation which God has imposed upon us. To often we are tempted to believe that we can discover something about God or the gospel which he has not revealed. This must obviously be folly and the temptation resisted.