Only Within the Communion of the Saints Can the Love of Christ Be Comprehended

“Scripture is not a legal document, the articles of which only need to be looked upon for a person to find out what its view is in a given case.  It is composed of many books written by various authors, dating back to different times and divergent in content.  It is a living whole, not abstract but organic.  It nowhere contains a sketch of the doctrine of faith; this is something that has to be drawn from the entire organism of Scripture.  Scripture is not designed so that we should parrot it but that as free children of God we should think his thoughts after him.  But then all so-called presuppositionlessness and objectivity are impossible.  So much study and reflection on the subject is bound up with it that no person can possibly do it alone.  That takes centuries.  To that end the church ahs been appointed and given the promise of the Spirit’s guidance into all truth.  Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e. from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith.  That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die.  Only within the communion of the saints can the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended.”

-Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, Vol. 1, (p. 83)

“Theologians Never Come to Scripture From The Outside”

“Accordingly, theologians never come to Scripture from the outside, without any prior knowledge or preconceived opinion, but bring with them from their background a certain understanding of the content of revelation and so look at Scripture with the aid of the glasses that their churches have put on them.  All dogmaticians, when they go to work, stand consciously  or unconsciously in the tradition of the Christian faith in which they were born and nurtured and come to Scripture as Reformed, or Lutheran, or Roman Catholic Christians.  In this respect as well, we cannot simply divest ourselves of our environment; we are always children of our time, the products of our background.  The result, therefore, is what one would expect:  all the dogmatic handbooks that have been published by members of the school of biblical theology faithfully reflect the personal and ecclesiastical viewpoint of their authors.  They cannot, therefore, claim to be more objective than those of explicitly ecclesiastical dogmaticians.”

-Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Prolegomena, (p. 82)

“Humanity’s entire weal and woe depends on religion”

Since humanity’s entire weal and woe depends on religion, only that certainty will do that is absolute and obtainable by all, even the simplest of people.  If religion is to be what it is said to be, viz., the service of God, the love of God with all one’s mind, heart, and strength, then it must be grounded in revelation, in a word from God that comes with his authority.  Divine authority is the foundation of religion and therefore the source and basis of theology as well.  All this is naturally implied in the concept and essence of religion.

Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Prolegomena, (p. 77)

A Summary of Bavinck’s Critique of Schleiermacher

According to Schleiermacher, true religion consists exclusively in devout states of consciousness and feeling.   According to Bavinck, Schleiermacher’s very premise is philosophically untenable. Religious feeling necessitates an object from which that feeling derives its significance. Therefore, not every state of consciousness and feeling is religious in nature, but only those that are triggered by a unique metaphysical force.  Bavinck then concludes that religious feeling plays a penultimate role in pointing back to the ultimacy of a more transcendent reality, which gives the feeling a uniquely religious quality.  Consequently, religious feeling can never be severed from the domain of metaphysics.

Faith rests upon knowledge and knowledge arouses trust. Faith, knowledge, and trust all pre-suppose a certain conception of God, and conceptions of God rest upon metaphysical premises, the very thing Schleiermacher wished to banish from his religious system.

Presuppositionlessness In Positivistic Theological Method

Total presuppositionlessness renders study and research impossible.  But if nevertheless presuppositionlessness is one’s aim and one takes a positivistic position with respect to religion, the inevitable result is a “theology of ‘mood’ in place of concepts, a system of paradoxes in place of sober truth, the ‘art’ of being enthused about everything in place of the conviction which looks for a fixed standard of things.”  In this area the purely empirical method results in surrender to the relativism of the historical process or event and the loss of one’s ability to judge the truth content of a religion.  It also results in the tendency to judge religious phenomena purely esthetically in terms of their “beauty.”  Then, as Nietzche did with Nero and Cesar Borgia, one goes into raptures over ecstatics and fanatics as the religious showpieces of humanity.

Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena, (p. 73)