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HERMAN BAVINK
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HERMAN BAVINK |
Herman Bavinck on Creation
Excerpts from Our Reasonable Faith
Extracted
from Ordained Servant vol. 9, no. 1 (January 2000), pp.
2-3
Creatures, because they are creatures, are subject to
time and space, though not all of them are this in the same way. Time makes it
possible for a thing to continue existing in a succession of moments, for one
thing to be after another. Space makes it possible for a thing to spread out to
all sides, for one thing to exist next to another. Time and space therefore
began to exist at the same time as the creatures, and as their inevitable modes
of existence. They did not exist beforehand as empty forms to be filled in by
the creatures for when there is nothing there is no time nor space either. They
were not made independently, alongside of the creatures, as accompaniments, so
to speak, and appended from the outside. Rather they were created in and with
the creatures as the forms in which those creatures must necessarily exist as
limited, finite creatures. Augustine was right when he said that God did not
make the world in time, as if it were created into a previously existing form or
condition, but that He made it together with time and time together with the
world.[1]
II
Although we cannot speak on this point with absolute
certainty, we may consider it likely that the heaven of heavens, the dwelling
place of God, was brought into existence by the first creative act of God
reported in Genesis 1:1 and that then the angels also came into existence. For
in Job 38:4-7 the Lord answers Job from the whirlwind that no man was present
when He laid the foundations of the earth and set the cornerstone of it, but
that He did complete that work accompanied by the song of the morning stars and
the shouting of the sons of God for joy. These sons of God are the angels. The
angels therefore were present; at the completion of the earth and the creation
of man.
For the rest, very little is told us about the creation of the heaven
of heavens and its angels. After having mentioned it briefly in the first verse,
the account of Genesis proceeds in the second verse to the broader report of the
finishing of the earth. Such a finishing or arrangement was necessary, for,
although the earth had already been made, nevertheless it existed for a while in
a wild and empty state and was covered with darkness. We do not read that the
earth became wild, that is, without form. Some have held that it was so, and in
taking this position they thought of a judgment that had accrued through the
fall of the angels to the already perfected earth. But Genesis 1:2 reports
merely that the earth was without form, that is, that it existed in a formless
or shapeless state, undifferentiated into light and darkness, the several bodies
of water, dry land and sea. It was only the works of God, described in Genesis
1:3-10, which put an end to that formlessness of the earth. Just so it is
reported that the original earth was void. It lacked the garnishing of plant and
tree, and was not yet inhabited by any living being. The works of God, summed up
in Genesis 1:11ff., put an end to this emptiness of the earth, for God did not
create the earth for it to be void, but in order that men should live in it
(Isa. 45:18). Clearly, therefore, the works of God in the arrangement or
completion of the void and formless earth are divided into two groups. The first
group of works or acts are introduced by the creation of light. It brings
differentiation and distinction into being, form and shape, tone and color. The
second group begins with the forming of the bearers of light, sun and moon and
stars, and serves further to populate the earth with inhabitants—birds and
fishes, and animals and man.[2]
III
The whole work of creation—according
to the repeated testimony of the Scriptures[3]—was completed in six days. There
has, however, been a good deal of difference of opinion and freedom of
speculation about those six days. No one less than Augustine judged that God had
made everything perfect and complete at once, and that the six days were not six
successive periods of time, but only so many points of vantage from which the
rank and order of the creatures might be viewed. On the other hand, there are
many who hold that the days of creation are to be regarded as much longer
periods of time than twenty-four hour units.
Scripture speaks very definitely
of days which are reckoned by the measurement of night and morning and which lie
at the basis of the distribution of the days of the week in Israel and its
festive calendar. Nevertheless Scripture itself contains data which oblige us to
think of these days of Genesis as different from our ordinary units as
determined by the revolutions of the earth.
In the first place we cannot be
sure whether what is told us in Genesis 1:1-2 precedes the first day or is
included within that day. In favor of the first supposition is the fact that
according to verse 5 the first day begins with the creation of light and that
after the evening and the night it ends on the following morning. But even
though one reckons the events of Genesis 1:1-2 with the first day, what one gets
from that assumption is a very unusual day which for a while consisted of
darkness. And the duration of that darkness which preceded the creation of light
is nowhere indicated.
In the second place, the first three days (Gen. 1:3-13)
must have been very unlike ours. For our twenty-four hour days are effected by
the revolutions of the earth on its axis, and by the correspondingly different
relationship to the sun which accompanies the revolutions. But those first three
days could not have been constituted in that way. It is true that the
distinction between them was marked by the appearance and disappearance of
light. But the Book of Genesis itself tells us that sun and moon and stars were
not formed until the fourth day.
In the third place, it is certainly possible
that the second series of three days were constituted in the usual way. But if
we take into account that the fall of the angels and of men and that also the
Flood which followed later caused all sorts of changes in the cosmos, and if, in
addition, we notice that in every sphere the period of becoming differs
remarkably from that of normal growth, then it seems not unlikely that the
second series of three days also differed from our days in many
respects.
Finally, it deserves consideration that everything which according
to Genesis 1 and 2 took place on the sixth day can hardly be crowded into the
pale of such a day as we now know the length of days to be. For on that day
according to Scripture there occurred the creation of the animals (Gen.
1:24-25), the creation of Adam (Gen. 1:26 and 2:7), the planting of the garden
(Gen. 2:8-14), the giving of the probationary command (Gen. 2:16-17), the
leading of the animals to Adam and his naming them (Gen. 2:18-20), and the sleep
of Adam and the creation of Eve (Gen. 2:21-23).[4]
PREACHING
HERMAN
BAVINCK ON THE LAW- HERMAN BAVINCK ON THE LAW-GOSPEL DISTINCTION AND PREACHING
GOSPEL DISTINCTION AND PREACHING
Translated by Dr. Nelson D.
Kloosterman
Dr. Kloosterman is a professor of Ethics and New
Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary.
Last Updated: April 21, 2001
Herman Bavinck was born in 1854, and raised in the experimental
Calvinism of the Dutch Second Reformation (the Nadere Reformatie). He studied
theology at the University of Leiden, and began teaching theology at the
Theological School of the Christian Reformed Churches (Christelijke
Gereformeerde Kerken) at Kampen in 1882. In 1902 Bavinck joined the faculty of
the Free University of Amsterdam as Professor of Systematic Theology, where he
served until his death in 1921.
The following material is a translation
of paragraphs 520-521 of Herman Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 3rd unaltered
edition, vol. 4 (Kampen, J. H. Kok, 1918), pages 490-498. Punctuation, sentence
length, and paragraph divisions reflect editorial decisions made for ease of
reading. Bavinck’s footnotes are included in the text between brackets in the
form of paraphrased summary.
These two sections form part of Chapter X,
“Concerning the Means of Grace.” Bavinck opens the chapter with §56, “The Word
as Means of Grace.” He has some beautiful things to say about the power of the
Word in regeneration and about the church as the “nursery” of that working.
Within this subsection we find his discussion of the Word of God as law and as
gospel.
* * * * * * *
520. The first and primary
means of grace is the Word of God. Lutheran and Reformed agree with each other
here. Nevertheless, the latter do not discuss the Word of God under the heading
of the means of grace, since in their dogmatics they have usually treated it by
this time in a separate chapter [reference to Calvin, Institutes 2.7-9, and
others], or also concerning the law in connection with the covenant of works,
and concerning the Gospel in connection with the covenant of grace [reference to
Marck, Med. Theol. and ‘many others’].
This peculiar method of
treatment does not warrant the claim that the Reformed did not acknowledge the
Word of God as means of grace, for they repeatedly declare the very opposite
[reference to BC 24, HC qu. 65). But one may indeed conclude from this fact that
for the Reformed, the Word of God possessed a far richer meaning than that it
served as means of grace only in the narrower sense of the word. The Word of God
is to be distinguished from the sacrament in part by the fact that the latter
serves to strengthen faith and thus has a role only within the church. But the
Word of God, both as law and as Gospel, is revelation of the will of God, is the
promulgation of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, addresses all
people and every creature, and has a universal meaning. The sacrament can be
administered only by a lawfully called minister in the gathering of believers,
but the Word of God has an existence and a place beyond that gathering, and
performs there too its manifold functions. As means of grace in the proper sense
alongside the sacrament, the Word of God is discussed insofar as it is preached
openly by the teacher; all the emphasis falls on the Word preached in God’s name
and by virtue of His commission. But as a rule, people will likely have been in
contact with that Word in the home, at school, by means of conversation and
reading material, long before they hear it openly proclaimed in the church. So
the public administration of the Word hardly contains all the power proceeding
from the Word; it serves also to bring about faith in those who do not yet have
it, but still more to strengthen faith among believers in their gathering. In a
Christian society the Word of God reaches people in various ways, from various
quarters, and it reaches a person from the time of infancy. Yes, God brings that
Word often to the hearts of children in the internal calling already before
consciousness is awakened, in order to regenerate and to sanctify them, even as
God writes the work of the law in the heart of each person from the very
beginning of his existence. Therefore we must distinguish between the Word of
God and Scripture. Not in the sense that the Word of God is merely to be found
in Scripture and Scripture itself is not the Word of God; but in this other
sense, that the Word of God most frequently, even in most instances, does not
reach us as Scripture, in the form of the Scripture, but in such a way that it
is taken up from the Scripture into the consciousness of the church, from there
in turn radiating outward to the various people, to accomplish its working, in
the form of admonition and address, nurture and instruction, book and writing,
tract and summons. And God always stands behind that Word; He is the one who
makes it move in those various forms to people and thus calls them to conversion
and life. In Scripture, then, the expression “word of God” is never identical to
Scripture, even though Scripture may without a doubt be called God’s Word. A few
passages come to mind where the expression “word of God” is applied to a part of
Holy Scripture, for example, to the written law. But for the rest, the phrase
“word of God” when used in Scripture is never the same as the Scripture,
something that is impossible, after all, since at that point Scripture was not
yet finished. The phrase “word of God” has various meanings in Scripture, and
can refer to the power of God whereby He creates and upholds, or His revelation
to the prophets, or the content of revelation, or the Gospel proclaimed by the
apostles. Nevertheless, it is always a word of God, which means: never simply a
sound, but a power, no mere information but also an accomplishment of His will,
Isa. 55:11. By the word God creates and upholds the world, Gen. 1:3, Ps. 33:6,
148:5, Isa. 48:13, Rom. 4:17, 2 Cor. 4:6, Heb. 1:3, 11:3, Jesus quiets the sea,
Mk. 4:38, heals the sick, Mt. 8:16, casts out demons, 9:6, raised the dead, Luke
7:14, 8:54, John 5:25,28; 11:43, etc. By the word He also works in the moral and
spiritual arenas.
The word which God employs to make known and
to fulfill His will in moral and spiritual areas is to be distinguished as law
and Gospel. When Jesus appeared on earth to proclaim the coming of the kingdom
promised in the OT (Mk.1:15), to bring the Gospel of forgiveness and salvation
to tax collectors and sinners, to poor and imprisoned (Mt.5:1f.; 11:5,28-30;
Lk.4:18-19; 19:10; etc.), He came into conflict as a matter of course with the
pharisaical, nomistic view of religion that dominated His time.
Yet, though He rejected the human inventions of the ancients
(Mt.5:21f.; 15:9), and though He had another conception [opvatting] of murder
(Mt.5:16), adultery (5:27), oaths (5:33), fasting (6:16), divorce (Mt.19:9),
sabbath (Mk.2:27), He maintains the entire law, also in its ceremonial
particulars (Mt.5:23,24; 17:24-27; 23:2,3,23; Mk.1:44; 11:16); He explains it
in its spiritual meaning (Mt.5-7), emphasizes its ethical content, defines love
toward God and neighbor as its core (Mt.7:12; 9:13; 12:7; Mk.7:15; 12:28-34),
and desires an other, overflowing righteousness than that of the Pharisees
(Mt.5.20). Though greater than the temple (Mt.12:6), He even placed Himself
under the law (Mt.3:15), and came to fulfill the law and the prophets (Mt.5:17).
And though He never sought to annul the law, He knew that His disciples are
inwardly free from the law (Mt.17:26); that His church is based not on the law
but on the confession of His Messiahship (Mt.16:18); that in His blood a new
covenant is established (Mt.26:28); in a word, that the new wine demands new
wineskins (Mt.9:17), and that the days of the temple, the nation and the law
were numbered (Mk.13:2). Jesus desired no revolutionary overthrow of the
legislative dispensation of the old covenant, but a reformation and renewal
that would be born out of its complete fulfillment.
And so, in
fact, it went. The church in Jerusalem at first still held to the temple and
law (Acts 2: 46; 3:1; 10:14; 21:20; 22:12). But a new conception surfaced.
With the conversion of the Gentiles the question arose as to the significance
of the Mosaic law. And Paul was the first to fully understand that in the death
of Christ the handwriting of ordinances was blotted out (Col.2:14).
Paul always understood by nomos (except where further qualification
pointed elsewhere, e.g., Rom.3:27; Gal.6:2) the Mosaic law, the entire Torah,
including the ceremonial commandments (Rom.9:4; Gal.2:12; 4:10; 5:3;
Phil.3:5-6). And he described this law not as the letter to the Hebrews does —
as imperfect, preparatory, Old Testamental dispensation of the covenant of
grace, which then disappeared when the high priest and surety of the better
covenant arrived — but as the revelation of God’s will, as a religious-ethical
demand and obligation, as a God-willed regulation of the relationship between
Himself and man. And concerning this law, so understood, Paul taught that it is
holy and good, and bestowed by God (Rom.2:18; 7:22,25; 9:4; 2 Cor.3:3,7); but
instead of being able, as the Pharisees argued, to grant righteousness, the
law is powerless through the flesh (Rom.8:3); stimulates desire (Rom.7:7-8);
increases the trespass (Rom.5:20; Gal.3:19); arouses wrath, curse and death
(Rom.4:15; 2 Cor.3:6; Gal.3:10); and was merely a temporary insertion, for
pedagogical reasons (Rom.5:20; Gal.3:19,24; 4:2-3).
Therefore,
that law has reached its end in Christ, the seed of promise (Rom.10:4); the
believer is free from the law (Gal.4:26f.; 5:1), since he is redeemed through
Christ from the curse of the law (Gal.3:13; 4:5), and shares in the Spirit of
adoption, the Spirit of freedom (Rom.8:15; 2 Cor.3:16-17; Gal.5:18).
This freedom of faith, however, does not invalidate the law, but
establishes it (Rom.3:31), since its legal requirement is fulfilled precisely
in those who walk according to the Spirit (Rom.8:4). After all, that Spirit
renews believers so that they delight in God’s law according to the inner man
and inquire as to what God’s holy will is (Rom.7:22; 12:2; Eph.5:10;
Phil.1:10), while they are spurred on through various impulses — the great mercy
of God, the example of Christ, the costly price with which they have been
purchased, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, etc. — to the doing of God’s
will.
521. This antithesis between law and Gospel was further
intensified and brought into irreconcilable conflict in the Christian church, on
the one hand, by antinomianism in its various forms of Gnosticism,
Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Anabaptism, Hattemism, etc. The entire OT derived
from a lower God, from an angry, jealous, vengeful God, and was replaced with an
entirely different revelation from the God of love, from the Father of
Christ.
On the other hand, the antithesis between law and
Gospel was weakened and obliterated by nomism in its various forms of
Pelagianism, Semi-pelagianism, Romanism, Socinianism, Rationalism, etc. Already
by the church fathers, and later by scholastic and Roman Catholic theologians,
law and Gospel were identified with Old and New Testaments, and then not placed
antithetically against one another, but viewed as a lower and higher revelation
of God’s will. Law and Gospel differed not in that the former only demands and
the latter only promises, for both contained commands, threats and promises;
musteria, promissiones, praecepta; res credendae, sperandae et faciendae; not
only Moses, but also Christ was legislator. But in all of this the Gospel of the
NT, or the lex nova, significantly transcended the law of the OT or the lex
vetus; the mysteries (trinity, incarnation, atonement, etc.) are revealed much
more clearly in the NT, the promises are much richer in content and embrace
especially spiritual and eternal goods, the laws are much more glorious and
bearable, since ceremonial and civil laws were annulled and replaced with just
a few rites. Furthermore, the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came in
Jesus Christ. The law was temporary and designed for one nation; the Gospel is
eternal and must be brought to every nation. The law was imperfect, a shadow and
figure; the Gospel is perfect and the substance of the [promised] goods
themselves. The law aroused fear and slavery, the Gospel arouses love and
freedom. The law could not justify in the full sense of the word; it provided
no richness of grace; it bestowed no eternal salvation; but the Gospel bestows
in the sacrament the power of grace, which enables one to fulfill God’s commands
and obtain eternal life. In one word: the law is the incomplete Gospel, the
Gospel is the completed law; the Gospel was contained in the law as the tree is
in the seed, as the full head of grain is in the seed [at this point Bavinck
refers to vol. 3, 213f., and to a number of theologians, such as Augustine,
Lombard, Aquinas, the Council of Trent, and Bellarmine].
Now,
to the degree that the Old and New Testament dispensations of the covenant of
grace could be described according to their form which came into view with the
progress of Holy Scripture, by the terms law and Gospel, to that degree the
distinction between both of them that was made by Rome (indeed not in every
respect, yet in the main) is to be approved. Still, Rome identified Old and New
covenant entirely with law and Gospel. She misperceived the Gospel in the Old
Testament and the law in the New Testament. Rome summarized the entire doctrine
proclaimed by Christ and the apostles as Gospel, in which they included not only
promises but also laws and threats. In this way, Rome made the Gospel into a
second law. The Pauline antithesis between law and Gospel was eliminated.
For though it is true that Paul understood by the law the entire OT
dispensation, he viewed it then precisely in its legislative [wettischen,
“lawish”; italics original] form and in this way places it in direct contrast it
to the Gospel. And when he did that, he acknowledged that the legislative
dispensation in no way invalidated the promise that had already been given to
Abraham (Gal.3:17,21). Moreover, Paul acknowledged that in the days of the old
covenant too the Gospel was proclaimed (Gal.3:8), and that then, too,
righteousness was obtained from and through faith (Rom.4:11,12; 11:32;
Gal.3:6-7).
Concerning the law as law, apart from the promise
to which it was made serviceable in the OT, Paul argued that it could not
justify; that it increased sin; that it was an administration of condemnation
which precisely in that way prepared for the fulfillment of the promise and
necessitated an other righteousness, namely, the righteousness of God in Christ
through faith.
And this antithesis of law and Gospel was again
understood by the Reformation. Indeed, the church fathers did make statements
that testified to clearer insight. But no clarity resulted, because they always
confused the distinction between law and Gospel with that between Old and New
Testaments.
But the Reformers, while on the one hand
maintaining against the Anabaptists the unity of the covenant of grace in both
of its administrations, on the other hand kept in view the sharp contrast
between law and Gospel, and thereby restored the unique character of the
Christian religion as a religion of grace.
Although law and
Gospel can still be employed in a broader sense for the old and new
dispensations of the covenant of grace, in their proper meaning they refer
nonetheless to two revelations of God’s will that differ essentially from one
another.
The law, too, is God’s will (Rom.2:18,20), holy and
wise and good, spiritual (Rom.7:12,14; 12:10), giving life to whomever keeps it
(Rom.2:13; 3:12). But through sin it has become impotent, and does not justify,
but through sin the law stimulates desire, increases the trespass, effects
wrath, kills, curses and damns (Rom.3:20; 4:15; 5:20; 7:5,8-9,13; 2 Cor.3:6f.;
Gal.3:10,13,19).
And over against the law stands the Gospel of
Christ, the euangelion, containing nothing less than the fulfillment of the OT
epangelia (Mk.1:15; Acts 13:32; Eph.3:6), coming to us from God (Rom.1:1-2; 2
Cor.11:7), having Christ as its content (Rom.1:3; Eph.3:6), and bringing
nothing else than grace (Acts 20:24), reconciliation (2 Cor.5:18), forgiveness
(Rom.4:3-8), righteousness (Rom.3:21-22), peace (Eph.6:15), freedom (Gal.5:13),
life (Rom.1:17; Phil.2:16; etc.). Like demand and gift, like command and
promise, like sin and grace, like sickness and healing, like death and life, so
here, too, law and Gospel stand over against one another. [Here Bavinck has a
footnote: From the Protestant side as well the distinction between law and
Gospel is often weakened or obliterated, e.g., by Stange, Die Heilsbedeutung des
Gesetzes, Leipzig 1904; Bruining, already cited in vol. 3, p. 631. Earlier
already by Zwingli,, according to Loofs, Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., 799.]
Although they overlap to the extent that they both have God as author, both
speak of one and the same perfect righteousness, both are directed to man, to
bring him to eternal life, yet they differ in that the law proceeds from God’s
holiness, the Gospel from His grace; the [works of the] law [are] known from
nature, the Gospel only by special revelation; the law demands perfect
righteousness, the Gospel bestows it; the law leads to eternal life through
works, the Gospel makes works proceed from eternal life bestowed through faith;
the law currently condemns man, the Gospel acquits him; the law is directed to
all men, the Gospel only to those who live under it; etc.
It
was in terms of this distinction that differences arose as to whether
preaching for faith and conversion which presented a condition and demand
really should be considered as belonging to the Gospel, or rather (according to
Flacius, Gerhard, Quenstedt, Voetius, Witsius, Coccejus, De Moor, et al.) to the
law. And indeed, in the strictest sense there are in the Gospel no demands and
conditions, but only promises and gifts; faith and conversion are, just as
justification, etc., benefits of the covenant of grace. Still, the Gospel
never appears concretely this way; in practice it is always joined to the law
and in Scripture it was then always woven together with the law. The Gospel
always presupposes the law, and needs it also in its administration. For it is
brought to rational and moral people who before God are responsible for
themselves and therefore must be called to faith and conversion. The demanding,
summoning shape in which the Gospel appears is borrowed from the law; every
person is obliged to take God at His word not first by the Gospel, but by nature
through the law, and thus also to accept the Gospel in which He speaks to the
person. Therefore the Gospel from the very beginning lays claim to all people,
binds them in their consciences, since that God who speaks in the Gospel is
none other than He who in His law has made Himself known to them. Faith and
conversion are therefore demanded of the person in the name of God’s law, by
virtue of the relationship in which the person as a rational creature stands
with respect to God; and that demand is directed not only to the elect and
regenerate, but to all men without distinction.
But faith and
conversion are themselves still the content of the Gospel, not effects or fruits
of the law. For the law does demand faith in God in general, but not that
special faith directed to Christ, and the law can effect metameleia,
poenitentia, but not metanoia, resipiscentia, which is rather a fruit of faith.
And though by nature a person is obliged to faith and conversion through the
law, precisely because they are the content of the Gospel one can speak of a
law, a command, an obedience of faith (Rom.1:5; 3:27; 1 Jn.3:23), of a being
obedient to and judged by the Gospel (Rom.2:16; 10:16), etc.
Viewed concretely, law and Gospel differ not so much in that the law always
meets us in the form of command and the Gospel in the form of promise, for the
law too has promises and the Gospel too has warnings and obligations. But they
differ especially in content: the law demands that man work out his own
righteousness, while the Gospel invites him to renounce all self-righteousness
and to receive the righteousness of Christ, to which end it even bestows the
gift of faith.
Law and Gospel stand in that relationship not
just before and at the point of conversion; but they continue standing in that
relationship throughout the whole of the Christian life, all the way to the
grave. The Lutherans have an eye almost exclusively for the accusing, condemning
work of the law and therefore know of no greater salvation than liberation
from the law. The law is necessary only on account of sin. According to
Lutheran theology, in the state of perfection there is no law. God is free from
the law; Christ was not subject to the law for Himself at all; the believer no
longer stands under the law. Naturally, the Lutherans speak of a threefold use
of the law, not only of a usus politicus (civilis), to restrain sin, and a usus
paedagogicus, to arouse the knowledge of sin, but also of a usus didacticus, to
function for the believer as a rule of living. But this last usus is
nonetheless necessary simply and only because and insofar as believers are still
sinners, and must still be tamed by the law, and must still be led to a
continuing knowledge of sin. In itself the law ceases with the coming of faith
and grace, and loses all its significance.
The Reformed,
however, have thought about this in an entirely different way. The usus
politicus and the usus paedagogicus of the law became necessary only
accidentally because of sin; even with these uses aside, the most important usus
remains, the usus didacticus or normativus. After all, the law is an expression
of God’s being. As a human being Christ was subject to the law for Himself.
Before the fall Adam had the law written upon his heart. With the believer it is
again written upon the tablets of his heart by the Holy Spirit. And all those
in heaven will walk according to the law of the Lord.
The
Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through
the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the
Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law
demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law
can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God
according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
Therefore, that law must always be preached to the congregation in connection
with the Gospel. Law and Gospel, the whole Word, the full counsel of God, is the
content of preaching. Among Reformed people, therefore, the law occupies a
much larger place than in the teaching of sin, since it is also part of the
teaching of gratitude. [Here Bavinck has a footnote providing bibliographical
references relating to the views of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Zanchius, Witsius,
De Moor, Vitringa, Schneckenburger, Frank, and Gottschick.]
Nelson D. Kloosterman
Testament at Mid-America Reformed Seminary.
Last Updated: April 21, 2001
Herman Bavinck was born in 1854, and
raised in the experimental Calvinism of the Dutch Second Reformation (the Nadere
Reformatie). He studied theology at the University of Leiden, and began teaching
theology at the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Churches
(Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken) at Kampen in 1882. In 1902 Bavinck joined
the faculty of the Free University of Amsterdam as Professor of Systematic
Theology, where he served until his death in 1921.
The following
material is a translation of paragraphs 520-521 of Herman Bavinck’s
Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 3rd unaltered edition, vol. 4 (Kampen, J. H. Kok,
1918), pages 490-498. Punctuation, sentence length, and paragraph divisions
reflect editorial decisions made for ease of reading. Bavinck’s footnotes are
included in the text between brackets in the form of paraphrased summary.
These two sections form part of Chapter X, “Concerning the Means of Grace.”
Bavinck opens the chapter with §56, “The Word as Means of Grace.” He has some
beautiful things to say about the power of the Word in regeneration and about
the church as the “nursery” of that working. Within this subsection we find his
discussion of the Word of God as law and as gospel.
* * * * * *
*
520. The first and primary means of grace is the Word of God.
Lutheran and Reformed agree with each other here. Nevertheless, the latter do
not discuss the Word of God under the heading of the means of grace, since in
their dogmatics they have usually treated it by this time in a separate chapter
[reference to Calvin, Institutes 2.7-9, and others], or also concerning the law
in connection with the covenant of works, and concerning the Gospel in
connection with the covenant of grace [reference to Marck, Med. Theol. and ‘many
others’].
This peculiar method of treatment does not warrant
the claim that the Reformed did not acknowledge the Word of God as means of
grace, for they repeatedly declare the very opposite [reference to BC 24, HC qu.
65). But one may indeed conclude from this fact that for the Reformed, the Word
of God possessed a far richer meaning than that it served as means of grace only
in the narrower sense of the word. The Word of God is to be distinguished from
the sacrament in part by the fact that the latter serves to strengthen faith and
thus has a role only within the church. But the Word of God, both as law and as
Gospel, is revelation of the will of God, is the promulgation of the covenant of
works and the covenant of grace, addresses all people and every creature, and
has a universal meaning. The sacrament can be administered only by a lawfully
called minister in the gathering of believers, but the Word of God has an
existence and a place beyond that gathering, and performs there too its manifold
functions. As means of grace in the proper sense alongside the sacrament, the
Word of God is discussed insofar as it is preached openly by the teacher; all
the emphasis falls on the Word preached in God’s name and by virtue of His
commission. But as a rule, people will likely have been in contact with that
Word in the home, at school, by means of conversation and reading material, long
before they hear it openly proclaimed in the church. So the public
administration of the Word hardly contains all the power proceeding from the
Word; it serves also to bring about faith in those who do not yet have it, but
still more to strengthen faith among believers in their gathering. In a
Christian society the Word of God reaches people in various ways, from various
quarters, and it reaches a person from the time of infancy. Yes, God brings that
Word often to the hearts of children in the internal calling already before
consciousness is awakened, in order to regenerate and to sanctify them, even as
God writes the work of the law in the heart of each person from the very
beginning of his existence. Therefore we must distinguish between the Word of
God and Scripture. Not in the sense that the Word of God is merely to be found
in Scripture and Scripture itself is not the Word of God; but in this other
sense, that the Word of God most frequently, even in most instances, does not
reach us as Scripture, in the form of the Scripture, but in such a way that it
is taken up from the Scripture into the consciousness of the church, from there
in turn radiating outward to the various people, to accomplish its working, in
the form of admonition and address, nurture and instruction, book and writing,
tract and summons. And God always stands behind that Word; He is the one who
makes it move in those various forms to people and thus calls them to conversion
and life. In Scripture, then, the expression “word of God” is never identical to
Scripture, even though Scripture may without a doubt be called God’s Word. A few
passages come to mind where the expression “word of God” is applied to a part of
Holy Scripture, for example, to the written law. But for the rest, the phrase
“word of God” when used in Scripture is never the same as the Scripture,
something that is impossible, after all, since at that point Scripture was not
yet finished. The phrase “word of God” has various meanings in Scripture, and
can refer to the power of God whereby He creates and upholds, or His revelation
to the prophets, or the content of revelation, or the Gospel proclaimed by the
apostles. Nevertheless, it is always a word of God, which means: never simply a
sound, but a power, no mere information but also an accomplishment of His will,
Isa. 55:11. By the word God creates and upholds the world, Gen. 1:3, Ps. 33:6,
148:5, Isa. 48:13, Rom. 4:17, 2 Cor. 4:6, Heb. 1:3, 11:3, Jesus quiets the sea,
Mk. 4:38, heals the sick, Mt. 8:16, casts out demons, 9:6, raised the dead, Luke
7:14, 8:54, John 5:25,28; 11:43, etc. By the word He also works in the moral and
spiritual arenas.
The word which God employs to make known and
to fulfill His will in moral and spiritual areas is to be distinguished as law
and Gospel. When Jesus appeared on earth to proclaim the coming of the kingdom
promised in the OT (Mk.1:15), to bring the Gospel of forgiveness and salvation
to tax collectors and sinners, to poor and imprisoned (Mt.5:1f.; 11:5,28-30;
Lk.4:18-19; 19:10; etc.), He came into conflict as a matter of course with the
pharisaical, nomistic view of religion that dominated His time.
Yet, though He rejected the human inventions of the ancients
(Mt.5:21f.; 15:9), and though He had another conception [opvatting] of murder
(Mt.5:16), adultery (5:27), oaths (5:33), fasting (6:16), divorce (Mt.19:9),
sabbath (Mk.2:27), He maintains the entire law, also in its ceremonial
particulars (Mt.5:23,24; 17:24-27; 23:2,3,23; Mk.1:44; 11:16); He explains it
in its spiritual meaning (Mt.5-7), emphasizes its ethical content, defines love
toward God and neighbor as its core (Mt.7:12; 9:13; 12:7; Mk.7:15; 12:28-34),
and desires an other, overflowing righteousness than that of the Pharisees
(Mt.5.20). Though greater than the temple (Mt.12:6), He even placed Himself
under the law (Mt.3:15), and came to fulfill the law and the prophets (Mt.5:17).
And though He never sought to annul the law, He knew that His disciples are
inwardly free from the law (Mt.17:26); that His church is based not on the law
but on the confession of His Messiahship (Mt.16:18); that in His blood a new
covenant is established (Mt.26:28); in a word, that the new wine demands new
wineskins (Mt.9:17), and that the days of the temple, the nation and the law
were numbered (Mk.13:2). Jesus desired no revolutionary overthrow of the
legislative dispensation of the old covenant, but a reformation and renewal
that would be born out of its complete fulfillment.
And so, in
fact, it went. The church in Jerusalem at first still held to the temple and
law (Acts 2: 46; 3:1; 10:14; 21:20; 22:12). But a new conception surfaced.
With the conversion of the Gentiles the question arose as to the significance
of the Mosaic law. And Paul was the first to fully understand that in the death
of Christ the handwriting of ordinances was blotted out (Col.2:14).
Paul always understood by nomos (except where further qualification
pointed elsewhere, e.g., Rom.3:27; Gal.6:2) the Mosaic law, the entire Torah,
including the ceremonial commandments (Rom.9:4; Gal.2:12; 4:10; 5:3;
Phil.3:5-6). And he described this law not as the letter to the Hebrews does —
as imperfect, preparatory, Old Testamental dispensation of the covenant of
grace, which then disappeared when the high priest and surety of the better
covenant arrived — but as the revelation of God’s will, as a religious-ethical
demand and obligation, as a God-willed regulation of the relationship between
Himself and man. And concerning this law, so understood, Paul taught that it is
holy and good, and bestowed by God (Rom.2:18; 7:22,25; 9:4; 2 Cor.3:3,7); but
instead of being able, as the Pharisees argued, to grant righteousness, the
law is powerless through the flesh (Rom.8:3); stimulates desire (Rom.7:7-8);
increases the trespass (Rom.5:20; Gal.3:19); arouses wrath, curse and death
(Rom.4:15; 2 Cor.3:6; Gal.3:10); and was merely a temporary insertion, for
pedagogical reasons (Rom.5:20; Gal.3:19,24; 4:2-3).
Therefore,
that law has reached its end in Christ, the seed of promise (Rom.10:4); the
believer is free from the law (Gal.4:26f.; 5:1), since he is redeemed through
Christ from the curse of the law (Gal.3:13; 4:5), and shares in the Spirit of
adoption, the Spirit of freedom (Rom.8:15; 2 Cor.3:16-17; Gal.5:18).
This freedom of faith, however, does not invalidate the law, but
establishes it (Rom.3:31), since its legal requirement is fulfilled precisely
in those who walk according to the Spirit (Rom.8:4). After all, that Spirit
renews believers so that they delight in God’s law according to the inner man
and inquire as to what God’s holy will is (Rom.7:22; 12:2; Eph.5:10;
Phil.1:10), while they are spurred on through various impulses — the great mercy
of God, the example of Christ, the costly price with which they have been
purchased, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, etc. — to the doing of God’s
will.
521. This antithesis between law and Gospel was further
intensified and brought into irreconcilable conflict in the Christian church, on
the one hand, by antinomianism in its various forms of Gnosticism,
Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Anabaptism, Hattemism, etc. The entire OT derived
from a lower God, from an angry, jealous, vengeful God, and was replaced with an
entirely different revelation from the God of love, from the Father of
Christ.
On the other hand, the antithesis between law and
Gospel was weakened and obliterated by nomism in its various forms of
Pelagianism, Semi-pelagianism, Romanism, Socinianism, Rationalism, etc. Already
by the church fathers, and later by scholastic and Roman Catholic theologians,
law and Gospel were identified with Old and New Testaments, and then not placed
antithetically against one another, but viewed as a lower and higher revelation
of God’s will. Law and Gospel differed not in that the former only demands and
the latter only promises, for both contained commands, threats and promises;
musteria, promissiones, praecepta; res credendae, sperandae et faciendae; not
only Moses, but also Christ was legislator. But in all of this the Gospel of the
NT, or the lex nova, significantly transcended the law of the OT or the lex
vetus; the mysteries (trinity, incarnation, atonement, etc.) are revealed much
more clearly in the NT, the promises are much richer in content and embrace
especially spiritual and eternal goods, the laws are much more glorious and
bearable, since ceremonial and civil laws were annulled and replaced with just
a few rites. Furthermore, the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came in
Jesus Christ. The law was temporary and designed for one nation; the Gospel is
eternal and must be brought to every nation. The law was imperfect, a shadow and
figure; the Gospel is perfect and the substance of the [promised] goods
themselves. The law aroused fear and slavery, the Gospel arouses love and
freedom. The law could not justify in the full sense of the word; it provided
no richness of grace; it bestowed no eternal salvation; but the Gospel bestows
in the sacrament the power of grace, which enables one to fulfill God’s commands
and obtain eternal life. In one word: the law is the incomplete Gospel, the
Gospel is the completed law; the Gospel was contained in the law as the tree is
in the seed, as the full head of grain is in the seed [at this point Bavinck
refers to vol. 3, 213f., and to a number of theologians, such as Augustine,
Lombard, Aquinas, the Council of Trent, and Bellarmine].
Now,
to the degree that the Old and New Testament dispensations of the covenant of
grace could be described according to their form which came into view with the
progress of Holy Scripture, by the terms law and Gospel, to that degree the
distinction between both of them that was made by Rome (indeed not in every
respect, yet in the main) is to be approved. Still, Rome identified Old and New
covenant entirely with law and Gospel. She misperceived the Gospel in the Old
Testament and the law in the New Testament. Rome summarized the entire doctrine
proclaimed by Christ and the apostles as Gospel, in which they included not only
promises but also laws and threats. In this way, Rome made the Gospel into a
second law. The Pauline antithesis between law and Gospel was eliminated.
For though it is true that Paul understood by the law the entire OT
dispensation, he viewed it then precisely in its legislative [wettischen,
“lawish”; italics original] form and in this way places it in direct contrast it
to the Gospel. And when he did that, he acknowledged that the legislative
dispensation in no way invalidated the promise that had already been given to
Abraham (Gal.3:17,21). Moreover, Paul acknowledged that in the days of the old
covenant too the Gospel was proclaimed (Gal.3:8), and that then, too,
righteousness was obtained from and through faith (Rom.4:11,12; 11:32;
Gal.3:6-7).
Concerning the law as law, apart from the promise
to which it was made serviceable in the OT, Paul argued that it could not
justify; that it increased sin; that it was an administration of condemnation
which precisely in that way prepared for the fulfillment of the promise and
necessitated an other righteousness, namely, the righteousness of God in Christ
through faith.
And this antithesis of law and Gospel was again
understood by the Reformation. Indeed, the church fathers did make statements
that testified to clearer insight. But no clarity resulted, because they always
confused the distinction between law and Gospel with that between Old and New
Testaments.
But the Reformers, while on the one hand
maintaining against the Anabaptists the unity of the covenant of grace in both
of its administrations, on the other hand kept in view the sharp contrast
between law and Gospel, and thereby restored the unique character of the
Christian religion as a religion of grace.
Although law and
Gospel can still be employed in a broader sense for the old and new
dispensations of the covenant of grace, in their proper meaning they refer
nonetheless to two revelations of God’s will that differ essentially from one
another.
The law, too, is God’s will (Rom.2:18,20), holy and
wise and good, spiritual (Rom.7:12,14; 12:10), giving life to whomever keeps it
(Rom.2:13; 3:12). But through sin it has become impotent, and does not justify,
but through sin the law stimulates desire, increases the trespass, effects
wrath, kills, curses and damns (Rom.3:20; 4:15; 5:20; 7:5,8-9,13; 2 Cor.3:6f.;
Gal.3:10,13,19).
And over against the law stands the Gospel of
Christ, the euangelion, containing nothing less than the fulfillment of the OT
epangelia (Mk.1:15; Acts 13:32; Eph.3:6), coming to us from God (Rom.1:1-2; 2
Cor.11:7), having Christ as its content (Rom.1:3; Eph.3:6), and bringing
nothing else than grace (Acts 20:24), reconciliation (2 Cor.5:18), forgiveness
(Rom.4:3-8), righteousness (Rom.3:21-22), peace (Eph.6:15), freedom (Gal.5:13),
life (Rom.1:17; Phil.2:16; etc.). Like demand and gift, like command and
promise, like sin and grace, like sickness and healing, like death and life, so
here, too, law and Gospel stand over against one another. [Here Bavinck has a
footnote: From the Protestant side as well the distinction between law and
Gospel is often weakened or obliterated, e.g., by Stange, Die Heilsbedeutung des
Gesetzes, Leipzig 1904; Bruining, already cited in vol. 3, p. 631. Earlier
already by Zwingli,, according to Loofs, Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., 799.]
Although they overlap to the extent that they both have God as author, both
speak of one and the same perfect righteousness, both are directed to man, to
bring him to eternal life, yet they differ in that the law proceeds from God’s
holiness, the Gospel from His grace; the [works of the] law [are] known from
nature, the Gospel only by special revelation; the law demands perfect
righteousness, the Gospel bestows it; the law leads to eternal life through
works, the Gospel makes works proceed from eternal life bestowed through faith;
the law currently condemns man, the Gospel acquits him; the law is directed to
all men, the Gospel only to those who live under it; etc.
It
was in terms of this distinction that differences arose as to whether
preaching for faith and conversion which presented a condition and demand
really should be considered as belonging to the Gospel, or rather (according to
Flacius, Gerhard, Quenstedt, Voetius, Witsius, Coccejus, De Moor, et al.) to the
law. And indeed, in the strictest sense there are in the Gospel no demands and
conditions, but only promises and gifts; faith and conversion are, just as
justification, etc., benefits of the covenant of grace. Still, the Gospel
never appears concretely this way; in practice it is always joined to the law
and in Scripture it was then always woven together with the law. The Gospel
always presupposes the law, and needs it also in its administration. For it is
brought to rational and moral people who before God are responsible for
themselves and therefore must be called to faith and conversion. The demanding,
summoning shape in which the Gospel appears is borrowed from the law; every
person is obliged to take God at His word not first by the Gospel, but by nature
through the law, and thus also to accept the Gospel in which He speaks to the
person. Therefore the Gospel from the very beginning lays claim to all people,
binds them in their consciences, since that God who speaks in the Gospel is
none other than He who in His law has made Himself known to them. Faith and
conversion are therefore demanded of the person in the name of God’s law, by
virtue of the relationship in which the person as a rational creature stands
with respect to God; and that demand is directed not only to the elect and
regenerate, but to all men without distinction.
But faith and
conversion are themselves still the content of the Gospel, not effects or fruits
of the law. For the law does demand faith in God in general, but not that
special faith directed to Christ, and the law can effect metameleia,
poenitentia, but not metanoia, resipiscentia, which is rather a fruit of faith.
And though by nature a person is obliged to faith and conversion through the
law, precisely because they are the content of the Gospel one can speak of a
law, a command, an obedience of faith (Rom.1:5; 3:27; 1 Jn.3:23), of a being
obedient to and judged by the Gospel (Rom.2:16; 10:16), etc.
Viewed concretely, law and Gospel differ not so much in that the law always
meets us in the form of command and the Gospel in the form of promise, for the
law too has promises and the Gospel too has warnings and obligations. But they
differ especially in content: the law demands that man work out his own
righteousness, while the Gospel invites him to renounce all self-righteousness
and to receive the righteousness of Christ, to which end it even bestows the
gift of faith.
Law and Gospel stand in that relationship not
just before and at the point of conversion; but they continue standing in that
relationship throughout the whole of the Christian life, all the way to the
grave. The Lutherans have an eye almost exclusively for the accusing, condemning
work of the law and therefore know of no greater salvation than liberation
from the law. The law is necessary only on account of sin. According to
Lutheran theology, in the state of perfection there is no law. God is free from
the law; Christ was not subject to the law for Himself at all; the believer no
longer stands under the law. Naturally, the Lutherans speak of a threefold use
of the law, not only of a usus politicus (civilis), to restrain sin, and a usus
paedagogicus, to arouse the knowledge of sin, but also of a usus didacticus, to
function for the believer as a rule of living. But this last usus is
nonetheless necessary simply and only because and insofar as believers are still
sinners, and must still be tamed by the law, and must still be led to a
continuing knowledge of sin. In itself the law ceases with the coming of faith
and grace, and loses all its significance.
The Reformed,
however, have thought about this in an entirely different way. The usus
politicus and the usus paedagogicus of the law became necessary only
accidentally because of sin; even with these uses aside, the most important usus
remains, the usus didacticus or normativus. After all, the law is an expression
of God’s being. As a human being Christ was subject to the law for Himself.
Before the fall Adam had the law written upon his heart. With the believer it is
again written upon the tablets of his heart by the Holy Spirit. And all those
in heaven will walk according to the law of the Lord.
The
Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through
the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the
Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law
demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law
can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God
according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
Therefore, that law must always be preached to the congregation in connection
with the Gospel. Law and Gospel, the whole Word, the full counsel of God, is the
content of preaching. Among Reformed people, therefore, the law occupies a
much larger place than in the teaching of sin, since it is also part of the
teaching of gratitude. [Here Bavinck has a footnote providing bibliographical
references relating to the views of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Zanchius, Witsius,
De Moor, Vitringa, Schneckenburger, Frank, and Gottschick.]
The account
of the origin of heaven and earth converges in the first chapter of Genesis upon
the creation of man. The creation of the other creatures, of heaven and earth,
of sun and moon and stars, of plants and animals, is reported in brief words,
and there is no mention made at all of the creation of the angels. But when
Scripture comes to the creation of man it lingers long over him, describes not
only the fact but also the manner of his creation, and returns to the subject
for further broad consideration in the second chapter.
This particular
attention devoted to the origin of man serves already as evidence of the fact
that man is the purpose and end, the head and crown of the whole work of
creation. And there are various material details which also illuminate the
superior rank and worth of man among the creatures.
In the first place, there
is the special counsel of God which precedes the creation of man. At the calling
into being of the other creatures, we read simply that God spoke and by His
speaking brought them into existence. But when God is about to create man He
first confers with Himself and rouses Himself to make men in His image and
likeness. This goes to indicate that especially the creation of man rests on
deliberation, on Divine wisdom and goodness and omnipotence. Nothing of course
came into existence by chance. But the counsel and decision of God is far more
clearly manifest in the making of man than in the creation of the other
creatures.
Moreover, in this particular counsel of God, the special emphasis
is placed on the fact that man is created after the image and likeness of God
and therefore stands in an entirely different relationship to God than all other
creatures. It is said of no other creatures, not even of the angels, that they
were created in God's image and that they exhibit His image. They may possess
hints and indications of one or several of God's attributes, but of man alone it
is affirmed that he is created after God's image and in His
likeness.
Scripture further emphasizes the fact that God created, not one
man, but men, according to His likeness. At the conclusion of Genesis 1:27 they
are designated as male and female. It is not man alone, nor woman exclusively,
but both of them, and those two in interdependence, who are the bearers of the
image of God. And, according to the blessing that is pronounced upon them in
verse 28, they are such image bearers not in and for themselves alone. They are
that also in their posterity, and together with their posterity. The human race
in each of its parts and in its entirety is organically created in the image and
likeness of God.
Finally, Scripture expressly mentions that this creation of
man in God's image must come to expression particularly in his dominion over all
living beings and in the subjection to Him of the whole earth. Because man is
the child or offspring of God, he is king of the earth. Being children of God
and heirs of the world are two things already closely related to each other, and
inseparably related to each other, in the creation.
* * * * *
The account
of the creation of man in the first chapter of Genesis is elaborated and
amplified in the second chapter (Gen. 2:4b-25). This second chapter of Genesis
is sometimes mistakenly designated the second creation story. This is erroneous
because the creation of heaven and earth is assumed in this chapter, and is
referred to in verse 4b in order to introduce the manner in which God formed man
from the dust of the earth. The whole emphasis in this second chapter falls on
the creation of man and on the way in which this took place. The big difference
between the first and second chapter of Genesis comes out in these details which
are told us in the second concerning the forming of man.
The first chapter
tells of the creation of heaven and earth and lets these lead up to the making
of man. In this chapter man is the last creature called into existence by God's
omnipotence. He stands at the end of the series of creatures as the lord of
nature, the king of the earth. But the second chapter, from Genesis 2:4b on,
begins with man, proceeds from him as starting point, sets him at the center of
things, and then relates what happened in the creation of man, how this took
place for the man and for the woman, what dwelling place was appointed for him,
with what vocation he was entrusted, and what purpose and destiny was his. The
first chapter speaks of man as the end or purpose of the creation; the second
deals with him as the beginning of history. The content of the first chapter can
be comprised in the name creation, and that of the second chapter in the name
Paradise.
There are three particulars which are told us in this second
chapter concerning man's origin, and which serve as the elaboration of what is
contained in the first chapter.
In the first place there is a fairly broad
treatment of the first dwelling place of man. The first chapter simply stated in
general terms that man was created after God's image and that he was appointed
lord over the whole earth. But it gives no hint as to where on the face of the
globe man first saw the light of life and where he first lived. This we are,
however, told in the second chapter. When God had made the heaven and the earth,
and when He had called the sun, moon, and stars, the plants and birds, the
animals of the land and those of the water, then no specific place had yet been
set aside as a dwelling for man. Hence God rests before He creates man and
prepares for him a garden or Paradise in the country of Eden, east of Palestine.
That garden is arranged in a particular way. God lets all kinds of trees come up
out of the soil there — trees beautiful to see and serviceable for food. Two of
these trees are designated by name, the tree of life planted in the middle of
the garden, and also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The garden was
laid out in such a way that a river which had its point of origin higher up in
the territory of Eden flowed through it, and then forked out into four streams,
the Pison, the Gihon, the Tiger, and the Euphrates.
A great deal of toil and
effort has in the course of the centuries gone into trying to determine where
Eden and the garden of Eden were located. Various representations have been put
forward about that one river that came up in Eden and flowed through the garden,
about the four rivers into which that major stream parted, about the name of the
territory of Eden, and about the garden inside it. But all of these
representations have remained conjectures. None has been established by solid
proof. Two interpretations would, however, seem to deserve the preference. The
first is the one according to which Eden lay towards the north in Armenia; the
other holds that it was farther south, in Babylonia. It is hard to decide
between these two. The details given in Scripture are no longer adequate to
determine just where this territory lay. But when we recall that the people who
sprang from Adam and Eve, though banned from Eden, nevertheless at first
lingered in that general area (Gen. 4:16), and that Noah's ark after the flood
came to rest on Mount Ararat (Gen. 8:4), and that the new mankind after the
flood spread out from Babel over the earth (Gen. 11:8-9), then it can hardly be
doubted that the cradle of humanity stood in that area bounded by Armenia on the
North and Shinar in the South. In modern times scholarship has come to reinforce
this teaching of Scripture. True, in the past, historical investigation made all
sorts of guesses about the original home of mankind, seeking it, in turn, in all
parts of the earth, but it is more and more retracing its steps. Ethnology, the
history of civilization, philology all point to Asia as the continent where once
the cradle of mankind stood.
A second feature to attract attention in Genesis
2 is the probationary command given to man. Originally this first man was simply
called the man (ha-adam) for he was alone for a while and there was no one
beside him who was like him. It is not until Gen. 4:25 that the name Adam occurs
without the definite article. There the name first becomes individual. This
indicates clearly that the first man, who for a while was the only human being,
was the beginning and origin and head of the human race. As such he received a
double task to perform: first, to cultivate and preserve the garden of Eden,
and, second, to eat freely of all the trees in the garden except of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil.
The first task defines his relationship to
the earth, the second his relationship to heaven. Adam had to subdue the earth
and have dominion over it, and this he must do in a twofold sense: he must
cultivate it, open it up, and so cause to come up out of it all the treasures
which God has stored there for man's use; and he must also watch over it,
safeguard it, protect it against all evil that may threaten it, must, in short,
secure it against the service of corruption in which the whole of creation now
groans.
But man can fulfill this calling over against the earth only if he
does not break the bond of connection which unites him with heaven, only if he
continues to believe God at His word and to obey His commandment. The twofold
task is essentially therefore one task. Adam must have dominion over the earth,
not by idleness and passivity but through the work of his head and heart and
hand.
But in order to rule, he must serve; He must serve God who is his
Creator and Lawgiver. Work and rest, rule and service, earthly and heavenly
vocation, civilization and religion, culture and cultus, these pairs go together
from the very beginning. They belong together and together they comprise in one
vocation the great and holy and glorious purpose of man. All culture, that is,
all work which man undertakes in order to subdue the earth, whether agriculture,
stock breeding, commerce, industry, science, or the rest, is all the fulfillment
of a single Divine calling. But if man is really to be and remain such he must
proceed in dependence on and in obedience to the Word of God. Religion must be
the principle which animates the whole of life and which sanctifies it into a
service of God.
A third particular of this second chapter of Genesis is the
gift of the woman to the man and the institution of marriage. Adam had received
much. Though formed out of the dust of the earth, he was nevertheless a bearer
of the image of God. He was placed in a garden which was a place of loveliness
and was richly supplied with everything good to behold and to eat. He received
the pleasant task of dressing the garden and subduing the earth, and in this he
had to walk in accordance with the commandment of God, to eat freely of every
tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But no matter how richly
favored and how grateful, that first man was not satisfied, not fulfilled. The
cause is indicated to him by God Himself. It lies in his solitude. It is not
good for the man that he should be alone. He is not so constituted, he was not
created that way. His nature inclines to the social — he wants company. He must
be able to express himself, reveal himself, and give himself. He must be able to
pour out his heart, to give form to his feelings. He must share his awarenesses
with a being who can understand him and can feel and live along with him.
Solitude is poverty, forsakenness, gradual pining and wasting away. How lonesome
it is to be alone!
And He who created man thus, with this kind of need for
expression and extension can in the greatness and grace of His power only choose
to supply the need. He can only create for him a helpmeet who goes along with
him, is related to him, and suits him as counterpart. The account tells us in
verses 19 to 21 that God made all the beasts of the field and all the fowls of
the air, and brought them unto Adam to see whether among all those creatures
there was not a being who could serve Adam as a companion and a helper. The
purpose of these verses is not to indicate the chronological order in which
animals and man were made, but rather to indicate the material order, the rank,
the grades of relationship in which the two sorts of creatures stand over
against each other. This relationship of rank is first indicated in the fact
that Adam named the animals.
Adam therefore understood all the creatures, he
penetrated their natures, he could classify and subdivide them, and assign to
each of them the place in the whole of things which was their due. If,
accordingly, he discovered no being among all those creatures who was related to
himself, this was not the consequence of ignorance nor of foolhardy arrogance or
pride; rather, it stemmed from the fact that there existed a difference in kind
between him and all other creatures, a difference not of degree merely but of
essence. True, there are all kinds of correspondences between animal and man:
both are physical beings, both have all kinds of need and desire for food and
drink, both propagate offspring, both possess the five senses of smell, taste,
feeling, sight, and hearing, and both share the lower activities of cognition,
awareness, and perception. Nonetheless, man is different from the animal. He has
reason, and understanding, and will and in consequence of these he has religion,
morality, language, law, science, and art. True, he was formed from the dust of
the earth, but he received the breath of life from above. He is a physical, but
also a spiritual, rational, and moral being. And that is why Adam could not find
a single creature among them all that was related to him and could be his
helper. He gave them all names, but not one of them deserved the exalted, royal
name of man.
Then, when man could not find the thing he sought, then, quite
apart from man's own witting and willing, and without contributive effort on his
own part, God gave man the thing he himself could not supply. The best things
come to us as gifts; they fall into our laps without labor and without price. We
do not earn them nor achieve them: we get them for nothing. The richest and most
precious gift which can be given to man on earth is woman. And this gift he gets
in a deep sleep, when he is unconscious, and without any effort of will or
fatigue of the hand. True, the seeking, the looking about, the inquiring, the
sense of the need precedes it. So does the prayer. But then God grants the gift
sovereignly, alone, without our help. It is as though He conducts the woman to
the man by His own hand.
Thereupon the first emotion to master Adam, when he
wakes up and sees the woman before him, is that of marvelling and gratitude. He
does not feel a stranger to her, but recognizes her immediately as sharing his
own nature with him. His recognition was literally a recognition of that which
he had felt he missed and needed, but which he could not himself supply. And his
marvelling expresses itself in the first marriage hymn or epithalamium ever to
be sounded on the face of the earth: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of
my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.” Adam
therefore remains the source and head of the human race. The woman is not merely
created alongside of him but out of him (1 Cor. 11:8). Just as the stuff for
making Adam's body was taken from the earth, so the side of Adam is the basis of
the life of Eve. But just as out of the dust of the earth the first man became a
living being through the breath of life which came from above, so out of Adam's
side the first woman first became a human being by the creative omnipotence of
God. She is out of Adam and yet is another than Adam. She is related to him and
yet is different from him. She belongs to the same kind and yet in that kind she
occupies her own unique position. She is dependent and yet she is free. She is
after Adam and out of Adam, but owes her existence to God alone. And so she
serves to help the man, to make his vocation of subduing the earth possible. She
is his helper, not as mistress and much less as slave, but as an individual,
independent, and free being, who received her existence not from the man hut
from God, who is responsible to God, and who was added to man as a free and
unearned gift.
* * * * *
Thus the Scripture reports the origin of man, of
both the male and the female. Such is its thought about the institution of
marriage and the beginning of the human race. But in these days a very different
construction is put upon these things, and this is done in the name of science
and allegedly with the authority of science. And as this new construction
penetrates farther and farther until it reaches even the masses of the people,
and since it is of the greatest importance for a world and life view, it is
necessary to devote our attention to it for a few moments, and to subject the
basis on which it rests to an appraisal.
If a person repudiates the
Scriptural account of the origin of the human race, it becomes necessary of
course to give some other account of it. Man exists, and no one can escape
asking the question where he came from. If he does not owe his origin to the
creative omnipotence of God, he owes it to something else. And then no solution
remains except to say that man gradually developed himself out of the antecedent
lower beings and worked himself up to his present high position in the order of
being. Evolution is, therefore, the magic word which in our times must somehow
solve all problems about the origin and essence of creatures. Naturally, since
the teaching of creation is repudiated, the evolutionist must accept that
something or other existed in the beginning inasmuch as nothing can come from
nothing. The evolutionist, however, in view of this fact, proceeds from the
wholly arbitrary and impossible assumption that matter and energy and motion
existed eternally. To this he adds that before our solar system came into being,
the world consisted simply of a chaotic gaseous mass. This was the starting
point of the evolution which gradually resulted in our present world and all of
its creatures. It is by evolution that the solar system and the earth came into
existence. By evolution the layers of the earth and the minerals came into
being. By evolution the animate came into being out of the inanimate through an
endless series of years. By evolution plants, and animals, and men came to be.
And inside the pale of the human, it was again by evolution that sexual
differentiation, marriage, family, society, state, language, religion, morality,
law, science, art and all the other values of civilization in a regular order
came into existence. If only one may proceed from this one assumption that
matter and energy and motion existed eternally, then, it is supposed, one no
longer needs to postulate a God. Then the world is self-explanatory. Science, it
is then believed, constitutes God entirely unnecessary.
The theory of
evolution goes on to develop its idea of the origin of man in the following way.
When the earth had cooled off, and thus become fit for the birth of living
creatures, life arose under the circumstances then extant, very probably in such
a way that at first inanimate albuminous combinations formed themselves which,
affected by various influences, developed various properties, and that these
albuminous entities by way of combination and mingling with each other gave rise
to protoplasm, the first germ of life. Thence began the biogenetic development,
the development of living beings. It was a process which may have taken a
hundred million years of time.
This protoplasm formed the albuminous nucleus
of the cell which is now regarded as the basic constituent of all living beings,
whether plants, or animals, or men. Unicellular protozoa were thus the earliest
organisms. According to whether these were mobile or immobile, they developed in
time into plants or into animals. Among the animals the infusoria stand lowest
in the scale, but out of these there gradually come up, by way of various
intermediate and transitional stages, the higher kinds of animals, known as the
vertebrate, invertebrate, mollusks and radiate animals. Thereupon the vertebrate
animals are again divided into four classes: fishes, amphibians, birds, and
mammals. This group, in turn, is divided into three orders: the duck-billed, the
marsupials, and the placentate animals; and this last is again subdivided into
the rodents, the ungulate animals, the beasts of prey, and the primates. The
primates in turn are classified as semi-apes, apes, and anthropoids.
When we
compare the physical organism of man with that of these various animals, we
discover, according to the evolutionist, that man, in an order of increasing
resemblance, is closest in kind to the vertebrates, the mammals, the placentate
animals, and the primates, and that he resembles most closely of all the
anthropoids, represented by the orang and the gibbon in Asia, and by the gorilla
and the chimpanzee in Africa. These are therefore to be regarded as the closest
relatives of man. True, they differ from man in size, shape, and the like, but
they are altogether like him in their basic physical structure. All the same,
man did not come from one of those kinds of apes now extant, but from an
anthropoid long since extinct. Apes and men are according to this theory of
evolution blood relatives, belong to the same race, though they are to be
regarded rather as nephews and nieces than as brothers and sisters.
Such is
the idea of the theory of evolution. Such, according to it, was the course of
events. But the evolutionist also felt called upon to say something about the
way in which all this took place. It was easy enough to say that plants and
animals and men had formed an unbroken and rising series of beings. But the
evolutionist felt that he ought to do something towards demonstrating that such
a development was actually possible, that an ape, for instance, could gradually
come to be a man. Charles Darwin in 1859 attempted such a demonstration. He
noticed that plants and animals — roses and doves, for example — could by
artificially assisted natural selection be brought to exhibit significant
modifications. Thus he hit upon the idea that in nature, too, such a natural
selection might have been operative, a selection not artificially controlled by
human intervention, but unconscious, arbitrary, natural. With this thought a
light dawned on him. For by accepting such a theory of natural selection he
supposed himself in a position to explain how plants and animals gradually
undergo changes, how they can overcome defects in their organization and can
achieve advantages, and that in such a way they constantly equip themselves
better for successful competition with others in the struggle for existence.
For, according to Darwin, life is always and everywhere in the whole creation
just that: a struggle for existence. Superficially observed, it may seem that
there is peace in nature, but this is a deceptive appearance. Rather, there is
that constant struggle for life and the necessaries for life, for the earth is
too small and too meager to supply all the beings that are born into it with the
requisite foods. Hence millions of organisms perish because of need; only the
strongest survive. And these strongest ones, who are superior to the others
because of some property they have developed, gradually transfer their acquired,
advantageous characteristics to their posterity.
Hence there is progress and
ever higher development. Natural selection, the struggle for existence, and the
transfer of old and newly acquired characteristics explain, according to Darwin,
the appearance of new species, and also the transition from animal to man.
*
* * * *
In evaluating this theory of evolution it is necessary above all to
make a sharp distinction between the facts to which it appeals and the
philosophical view with which it looks at them. The facts come down to this:
that man shares all kinds of characteristics with other living beings, more
particularly with the higher animals, and among these in turn especially with
the apes. Naturally, these facts were for the most part known before Darwin
also, for the correspondence in physical structure, in the several organs of the
body and in their activities, in the five senses, in the perceptions and
awarenesses, and the like, is something which all who look may see, and simply
is not susceptible to denial. But the sciences of anatomy, biology, and
physiology, and also that of psychology, have in recent times investigated those
corresponding characteristics much more thoroughly than was done before. The
characteristics of resemblance have accordingly increased in number and
importance. There were other sciences too which contributed their part to
confirming and extending these similarities between man and animal. The science
of embryology, for instance, indicated that a human being in its beginnings in
the womb resembles a fish, an amphibian, and the lower mammals. Paleontology,
which busies itself with the study of conditions and circumstances in ancient
times, discovered remnants of human beings — skeletons, bones, skulls, tools,
ornaments, and the like — which pointed to the fact that centuries ago some
people in some parts of the earth lived in a very simple way. And ethnology
taught that there were tribes and peoples who were widely separated both
spiritually and physically from the civilized nations.
When these facts,
brought together from various sides, became known, philosophy soon busied itself
with combining them into an hypothesis, the hypothesis of the gradual evolution
of all things, and specifically also of man. This hypothesis did not come up
after the facts were discovered nor because of them, but existed a long time
ago, was sponsored by a number of philosophers, and was now applied to the
facts, some of which were newly discovered. The old hypothesis, the old theory,
now came to rest, it was supposed, on the firmly founded facts. A sort of hurrah
went up because of the fact that now all the riddles of the world, except that
one of the eternal matter and energy, were solved and all secrets were
discovered. But hardly had this proud edifice of the evolutionary philosophy
been built when the attack upon it began and it started to crumble. Darwinism,
says a distinguished philosopher, came up in the 1860's, staged its triumphal
procession in the 1870's, was thereupon questioned by some few in the 1890's,
and since the turn of the century has been strongly attacked by many.
The
first and sharpest of the attacks was launched against the manner in which,
according to Darwin, the several species had come into existence. The struggle
for existence and natural selection did not suffice as an explanation. True,
there is often a fierce struggle in the plant and animal worlds, and this
struggle has a significant influence on their nature and existence. But it has
by no means been proved that this struggle can cause new species to come into
being. The struggle for existence can contribute to the strengthening of
tendencies and abilities, of organs and potentialities, by way of exercise and
effort. It can develop what is present already, but it cannot bring into being
what does not exist. Besides, it is an exaggeration, as any one knows from his
own experience, to say that always and everywhere nothing exists except
struggle.
There is more than hatred and animosity in the world. There is also
love and cooperation and help. The doctrine that there is nothing anywhere but
warfare on the part of all against all is just as one-sided as the idyllic view
of the eighteenth century that everywhere in nature there is rest and peace.
There is room for many at the big table of nature, and the earth which God gave
as a dwelling place for man, is inexhaustibly rich. Consequently, there are many
facts and manifestations which have nothing to do with a struggle for existence.
Nobody, for instance, can point out what the colors and figures of the snail's
skin, the black color of the underbelly in many vertebrate animals, the graying
of the hair with increasing age, or the reddening of the leaves in the autumn
have to do with the struggle for existence. Nor is it true that in this struggle
the strongest types always and exclusively win the victory, and that the weakest
are always defeated. A so-called coincidence, a fortunate or unfortunate
circumstance, often mocks all such calculations. Sometimes a strong person is
taken away in the strength of his years, and sometimes a physically weak man or
woman reaches a ripe old age.
Such considerations led a Dutch scholar to
substitute another theory for that of Darwin's natural selection, that of
mutation, according to which the change of species did not take place regularly
and gradually, but suddenly sometimes, and by leaps or jumps. But in this matter
the question is whether these changes really represent new species or simply
modifications in the species already extant. And the answer to that question
hinges again on just what one means by species.
Not only the struggle for
existence, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest have lost status
in this century, but also the idea of the transfer of acquired characteristics.
The transfer of natural, inherited characteristics from parents to children from
the nature of the case tends rather to plead against than for Darwinism,
inasmuch as it implies the constancy of species. Centuries on end men beget men
and nothing else. Concerning the transfer of acquired as distinguished from
inherited characteristics there is now so much difference of opinion that
nothing can be said about it with certainty. This much, however, is certain,
that acquired characteristics very often are not transferred by the parents to
the children. Circumcision, for instance, was practised by some people for
centuries, and yet left no traces in the children after all that while. Transfer
by inheritance takes place only inside certain boundaries and does not effect
any change of kind or species. If the modification is artificially induced, it
must also be artificially maintained or else it is lost again. Darwinism, in
short, cannot explain either heredity or change. Both are facts whose existence
is not denied, but their connection and relationship still lie beyond the pale
of our knowledge.
More and more, therefore, Darwinism proper, that is,
Darwinism in the narrower sense, namely, the effort to explain change of species
in terms of the struggle for existence, natural selection, and the transfer of
acquired characteristics was abandoned by the men of science. The prediction of
one of the first and most eminent of opponents of Darwin's theory was literally
fulfilled: namely, that this theory for explaining the mysteries of life would
not last till even the end of the nineteenth century. But more important is the
fact that criticism has not been directed against Darwin's theory alone but
against the theory of evolution itself also. Naturally, facts remain facts and
may not be ignored. But theory is something else, something built upon the facts
by thought. And what became more and more evident was that the theory of
evolution did not fit the facts but was even in conflict with them.
Geology,
for instance, revealed that the lower and higher sorts of animals do not follow
each other in sequence but as a matter of fact existed alongside of each other
ages ago. Paleontology did not come up with a single piece of conclusive
evidence for the existence of transitional types between the several species of
organic beings. Still, according to Darwin's theory of extremely gradual
evolution by way of extremely small changes, these types should have been
present in quantity. Even the ardently sought after and energetically pursued
intermediary type between man and the ape was not discovered. Embryology, it is
true, does point to a certain external similarity between the various stages in
the development of the embryo of man and that of other animal bodies. But this
similarity is external for the simple reason that from an animal embryo a human
being is never born, nor an animal from a human embryo. In other words, man and
animal go in different directions from conception on, even though the internal
differences cannot then be perceived. Biology has up to this time offered so
little support to the proposition that life generated itself that many now
accept the impossibility of that and are returning to the idea of a special life
force or energy. Physics and chemistry, in proportion to the extent to which
they have pressed their investigations, have found more and more secrets and
marvels in the world of the infinitely small, and have caused many to return to
the thought that the basic constituents of things are not material entities but
forces. And — to mention no further evidences — all the efforts that have been
put forth to explain consciousness, freedom of the will, reason, conscience,
language, religion, morality, and all such manifestations, as being solely the
product of evolution have not been crowned with success. The origins of all
these manifestations, like those of all other things, remain shrouded in
darkness for science.
For it is important to note finally that when man makes
his appearance in history he is already man according to body and soul, and he
is already in possession, everywhere and at all times, of all those human
characteristics and activities whose origins science is trying to discover.
Nowhere can human beings be found who do not have reason and will, rationality
and conscience, thought and language, religion and morality, the institutions of
marriage and the family, and the like. Now if all of these characteristics and
manifestations have gradually evolved, such an evolution must have taken place
in prehistoric times, that is, in times of which we know nothing directly, and
about which we make surmises only on the basis of a few facts perceived in later
times. Any science, therefore, which wants to burrow through to that prehistoric
time and to discover the origins of things there, must from the nature of the
case take recourse to guesses, surmises, and suppositions. There is no
possibility here for evidence or proof in the strict sense. The doctrine of
evolution generally and that of the descent of man from the animal particularly
are not supported in the least by facts supplied by historic times. Of all the
elements on which such theories are built nothing remains in the end but a
philosophical world-view which wants to explain all things and all
manifestations in terms of the things and manifestations themselves, leaving God
out of account. One of the proponents of the evolutionary view admitted it
bluntly: the choice is between evolutionary descent or miracle; since miracle is
absolutely impossible we are compelled to take the first position. And such an
admission demonstrates that the theory of the descent of man from lower animal
forms does not rest on careful scientific investigation but is rather the
postulate of a materialistic or pantheistic philosophy.
* * * * *
The idea
of the origin of man is very closely related to that of the essence of man. Many
nowadays talk differently, saying that man and the world, irrespective of what
was their origin and their development in the past, are what they are now and
will remain such.
This position is of course entirely correct: reality
remains the same, irrespective of whether we form a true or a false idea of it.
But the same holds of course concerning the origin of things. Even though we
imagine that the world and mankind came into being in some particular fashion —
gradually, say, during the course of centuries, by all sorts of infinitesimally
small changes through self-generation — such a supposition does not, of course,
change the actual origin. The world came into being in the way that it did, and
not in the way we wish it or suppose it. But the idea we have of the origin of
things is inseparably connected with the idea we have of the essence of
things.
If the first is wrong, the second cannot be right. If we think that
the earth and all the realms of nature, that all creatures and particularly also
human beings, came into being without God solely through the evolution of
energies which are residual in the world, such an idea must necessarily have a
most significant influence on our conception of the essence of world and
man.
True, the world and man will remain themselves irrespective of our
interpretation; but for us they become different, they increase or decrease in
worth and significance according as we think of their origin and their coming
into existence.
This is so evident that it requires no ampler illumination or
confirmation. But because the notion that we can think what we please about the
origin of things, inasmuch as what we think of their essence is unaffected by
it, is a notion which comes back again and again — for example, in the doctrine
of Scripture, the religion of Israel, the person of Christ, religion, morality,
and the like — it may be useful now, in consideration of the essence of man, to
indicate the falsity of that notion once more. It is not difficult to do so. For
if man has gradually evolved himself, so to speak, without God and solely
through blindly operative natural forces, then it follows naturally enough that
man cannot differ essentially from the animal, and that, in his highest
development also, he remains an animal. For a soul distinguished from the body,
for moral freedom and personal immortality, there is then no room at all. And
religion, truth, morality, and beauty then lose their proper (absolute)
character.
These consequences are not something which we impose on the
proponents of the theory of evolution but something rather which they themselves
deduce from it. Darwin, for instance, himself says that our unmarried women, if
they were educated under the same conditions as honey bees are, would think it a
sacred duty to kill their brothers even as the working bees do, and mothers
would try to murder their fertile daughters without anybody caring to intervene.
According to Darwin, therefore, the whole of the moral law is a product of
circumstances, and consequently it changes as the circumstances change. Good and
evil, even as truth and falsehood, are therefore relative terms, and their
meaning and worth are, like fashions, subject to the changes of time and place.
So, too, according to others, religion was but a temporary aid, something of
which man in his inadequacy for the struggle against nature made use, and which
now too can serve as an opiate for the people, but something which on the long
run will naturally die out and disappear when man has come into his full
freedom. Sin and transgression, felony and murder do not constitute man guilty
but are after-effects of the uncivilized state in which man formerly lived, and
they decrease in proportion to the extent that man develops and society
improves. Criminals are, accordingly, to he regarded as children, animals, or
insane types, and should be dealt with accordingly. Prisons should give way to
reformatories. In short, if man is not of Divine but of animal origin and has
gradually “evolved” himself he owes everything to himself alone, and is his own
lawgiver, master, and lord. All these inferences from the (materialistic or
pantheistic) theory of evolution come to expression very clearly in contemporary
science as well as in contemporary literature, art, and practical
polity.
Reality, however, teaches something quite different. Man can make
himself believe, if he wants to, that he has done everything himself and that he
is bound by nothing. But in every respect he remains a dependent creature. He
cannot do as he pleases. In his physical existence, he remains bound to the laws
laid down for respiration, the circulation of the blood, digestion, and
procreation. And if he runs counter to these laws and pays no attention to them,
he injures his health and undermines his own life. The same is true of the life
of his soul and spirit. Man cannot think as he pleases, but is bound to laws
which he has not himself thought out and laid down, but which are implied in the
very act of thinking and come to expression in it. If he does not hold to those
laws of thought, he snares himself in the net of error and falsehood. Nor can
man will and act as he pleases. His will is under the discipline of reason and
conscience; if he disregards this discipline and degrades his willing and acting
to the level of arbitrariness and caprice, then there is sure to be
self-reproach and self-indictment, regret and remorse, the gnawing and the
compunction of the conscience.
The life of the soul, therefore, no less than
the life of the body, is built on something other than caprice or accident. It
is not a condition of lawlessness and anarchy but is from all sides and in all
its activities determined by laws. It is subject to laws of truth and goodness
and beauty and so it demonstrates that it has not generated itself. In short,
man has from the very beginning his own nature and his own essence and these he
cannot violate with impunity. And so much stronger is nature in these matters
than theory that the adherents of the doctrine of evolution themselves keep
talking of a human nature, of immutable human attributes, of laws of thought and
ethics prescribed for man, and of an inborn religious sense. Thus the idea of
the essence of man comes into conflict with the idea of his origin.
In
Scripture, however, there is perfect agreement between the two ideas. There the
essence of man corresponds to his origin. Because man, although he was formed
from the dust of the earth according to the body, received the breath of life
from above, and was created by God Himself, he is a unique being, has his own
nature. The essence of his being is this: he exhibits the image of God and His
likeness.
* * * * *
This image of God distinguishes man from both the
animal and the angel. He has traits in common with both, but he differs from
both in having his own unique nature.
The animals, too, of course, were
created by God. They did not come into being of their own accord but were called
into existence by a particular word of the power of God. Besides, they were
immediately created in various kinds, even as the plants were. All men are
descended from one parental pair and thus constitute one generation or race.
This is not true of the animals; they have, so to speak, various ancestors.
Hence it is remarkable that zoology up to this time has not yet succeeded in
tracing all animals back to one type. It begins by at once designating some
seven or some four major groupings or basic types.
Presumably it is therefore
true that most of the animal types are not distributed over the whole earth, but
live in particular areas. The fishes live in the water, the birds in the air,
and the land animals for the most part are limited to definite territories: the
polar bear, for instance, is found only in the far north, and the duck-billed
platypus only in Australia. And so in Genesis it is specifically stated that God
created the plants (1:11) and also the animals after their kind — that is,
according to types. Naturally, this does not mean to say that the types which
were originally created by God were exactly those into which science, that of
Linnaeus, say, now classifies them. For one thing our classifications are always
liable to error because our zoology is still defective and inclined to regard
variants as types and vice versa. The artificial, scientific concept of an
animal type is very difficult to establish and is always very different from the
natural concept of type for which we are always still seeking. Moreover, in the
course of centuries a great many animal kinds have died out or been destroyed.
From the remains, whether whole or blasted, which we have of some of them, it is
evident that various kinds of animals, such as the mammoth, for instance, which
no longer exists, once abounded in quantity. And in the third place it should be
remembered that as a result of various influences big modifications and changes
have taken place in the animal world which often make it difficult or even
impossible for us to trace them back to an original type.
Further, it is
remarkable that in the creation of the animals even as in that of the plants
these were indeed called into being by a particular act of Divine power, but
that in this act nature also performed a mediate service. Let the earth bring
forth grass, we read in Genesis 1:11, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree
yielding fruit, and it was so (verse 12). The report is the same in Gen. 1:20:
Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and
fowl that may fly above the earth, and it was so (verse 21). Again in verse 24:
Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and
creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so. Thus in
each instance, nature is used by God as an instrument. It is the earth which,
although naturally conditioned and equipped for it by God, brings forth all
those creatures in their bountiful differentiation of kind.
This peculiar
origin of animals sheds some light, too, on their nature. This origin
demonstrates that the animals are much more closely related to the earth and to
nature than man is. True, the animals are living beings, and as such they are
distinguished from the inorganic, inanimate creatures. Hence, too, they are
often called living souls (Gen. 1:20, 21, and 24). In the general sense of a
principle of life the animals too have a soul.1 But this living principle of the
soul in the animal is still so closely bound to nature and to the metabolism of
matter that it cannot arrive at any independence or freedom, and it cannot exist
when separated from the metabolism or circulation of matter. At death,
therefore, the soul of the animal dies. From this it follows that the animals,
at least the higher animals, do have the same sense organs as man, and can sense
things (hear, see, smell, taste, and feel). They can form images or pictures,
and relate these images to each other. But animals do not have reason, cannot
separate the image from the particular, individual, and concrete thing. They
cannot metamorphose the images nor raise them into concepts, cannot relate the
concepts and so form judgments, cannot make inferences from the judgments nor
arrive at decisions, and cannot carry out the decisions by an act of the will.
Animals have sensations, images, and combinations of images; they have
instincts, desires, passions. But they lack the higher forms of desire and
knowledge which are peculiar to man; they have no reason and they have no will.
All this comes to expression in the fact that animals do not have language,
religion, morality, and the sense of beauty; they have no ideas of God, of the
invisible things, of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Thus man is
raised high above the animal plane. Between the two there is not a gradual
transition but a great gulf. That which constitutes the very nature of man, his
peculiar essence, namely his reason and his will, his thought and language, his
religion and morality, and the like, are alien to the animal. Therefore the
animal cannot understand man although man can understand the animal. Nowadays
the science of psychology tries to explain the soul of man in terms of the soul
of the animal, but this is to reverse the right order. The soul of man is the
key for getting at the soul of the animal. The animal lacks what man has, but
man has all that is peculiar to the animal.
This is not to say that now, too,
man knows the nature of animals through and through. The whole world is for man
a problem whose solution he seeks after and can seek after, and so too every
animal is a living mystery. The significance of the animal by no means consists
of the fact that the animal is useful to man, providing him with food and
shelter, clothing and ornament. Much more is contained in the subduing and
having dominion over the earth than that man should, in greed and egotism,
freely turn everything to his advantage. The animal world has significance also
for our science and art, our religion and morality. God has something, has much,
to tell us in the animal. His thoughts and words speak to us out of the whole
world, even out of the world of plants and animals. When botany and zoology
trace out these thoughts, these sciences, as, indeed, the natural sciences in
general, are glorious sciences, which no man, certainly no Christian, may
despise. Moreover, how rich the animal world is in moral significance for man!
The animal points to the boundary beneath, above which man must raise himself,
and to the level of which he must never sink. Man can become an animal and less
than an animal if he dulls the light of reason, breaks the bond with heaven, and
seeks to satisfy all his desire in the earth. Animals are symbols of our virtues
and our vices: the dog shows us the image of loyalty, the spider of industry,
the lion of courage, the sheep of innocence, the dove of integrity, the hart of
the soul thirsting for God; and, just so too, the fox is the image of cunning,
the worm of misery, the tiger of cruelty, the swine of baseness, the snake of
devilish guile, and the ape, who most nearly resembles the form of man, declares
what an impressive physical organization amounts to without spirit, the spirit
that is from above. In the ape man sees his own caricature.
* * * * *
Just
as man differs by the image of God from the animals below him, he is
distinguished by it also from the angels above him. The existence of such beings
as angels cannot, apart from Scripture, be proved by scientific argument.
Science knows nothing about them, cannot demonstrate that they exist, and cannot
demonstrate that they do not exist.
But it is remarkable that a belief in the
existence of beings who are above man occurs among all peoples and in all
religions, and that men, when they have rejected the testimony of the Scriptures
concerning the existence of angels, nevertheless, in all sort of superstitious
forms, come back to a belief in the existence of supramundane beings. Our
present generation abundantly proves this. Angels and devils are no longer held
to exist and in their stead a belief has arisen in many circles in latent
forces, mysterious natural powers, ghosts, apparitions, visitations of the
deceased, animated stars, inhabited planets, Marsmen, living atoms, and the
like. Interesting in connection with all these ancient and new manifestations is
the position which the Holy Scripture has over against them. irrespective of
whether falsehood or truth lies at the basis of them, Scripture forbids all
fortune telling,2 sorcery,3 astrology,4 necromancy,5 enchantment or the
consulting of oracles,6 all conjuring and wizardry,7 and the like, and so makes
an end of all superstition as well as of all unbelief. Christianity and
superstition are sworn foes. There is no science, enlightenment, or civilization
that can safeguard against superstition; only the word of God can protect us
from it. Scripture makes man most profoundly dependent upon God, but precisely
in so doing emancipates him from every creature. It puts man into a right
relationship with nature and so makes a true natural science possible.
But
the Scriptures do teach that there are angels, not the mythical creations of the
human imagination, not the personifications of mysterious forces, not the
deceased who have now climbed to higher levels, but spiritual beings, created by
God, subject to His will, and called to His service. They are beings, therefore,
of whom, in the light of Scripture, we can form a definite idea, and such as
have nothing in common with the mythological figures of the Pagan religions. In
knowledge they are raised high above man,8 and in power,9 but they were
nevertheless made by the same God and the same Word (John 1:3 and Col. 1:16),
and they have the same reason and the same moral nature, so that, for instance,
it is said of the good angels that they obey God's voice and do His pleasure
(Ps. 103: 20-21), and of the evil angels that they do not stand in the truth
(John 8:44), that they lead astray (Eph. 6:11), and that they sin (2 Peter
2:4).
But, in spite of this correspondence between them, there exists a big
difference between angels and men. It consists, in the first place, of the fact
that the angels do not have soul and body, but are pure spirits (Heb. 1:14).
True, at the time of their revelation they often appeared in physical forms, but
the several forms in which they appeared10 point to the fact that these assumed
forms of manifestation were temporary and that they changed in accordance with
the nature of the mission. Never are the angels called souls, living souls, as
the animals are and as man is. For soul and spirit differ from each other in
this respect that the soul, too, is by nature spiritual, immaterial, invisible,
and, even in man is a spiritually independent entity though it is always a
spiritual power or spiritual entity which is oriented to a body, suits a body,
and without such a body is incomplete and imperfect. The soul is a spirit
designed for a physical life. Such a soul is proper to animals and particularly
to man. When man loses his body in death, he continues to exist, but in an
impoverished and bereft condition, so that the resurrection on the last day is a
restoration of the lack. But the angels are not souls. They were never intended
for a bodily life and were not given earth but heaven as a dwelling place. They
are pure spirits. This gives them great advantages over man, for they stand
higher in knowledge and power, stand in a much freer relationship to time and
space than men do, can move about more freely, and are therefore exceptionally
well adapted to carrying out God's commands on earth.
But — and this is the
second distinction between men and angels — those advantages have their opposite
side. Because the angels are pure spirits, they all stand in a relatively loose
relationship with reference to each other. They were all originally created
together and they all continue to live alongside each other. They do not form
one organic whole, one race or generation. True, there is a natural order among
them. According to Scripture there are a thousand times a thousand angels,11 and
these are divided into classes: cherubims (Gen. 3:24), seraphims (Isa. 6), and
thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers (Eph. 1:21 and Col. 1:16; 2:10).
And there is further distinction of rank within the groups: Michael and Gabriel
have a special place among them.12 Nevertheless, they do not constitute one
race, are not blood relatives, did not beget each other. It is possible to speak
of a mankind but not of an angelkind. When Christ assumed the human nature He
was immediately related to all men, related by blood, and He was their brother
according to the flesh. But the angels live next to each other, each one
accountable for himself and not for the others, so that a portion of them could
fall and a portion remain faithful to God.
The third distinction between man
and angel is related' to the second. Because the angels are spirits and are not
related to the earth, because they are not related by blood, and do not know
such distinctions as father and mother, parents and children, brothers and
sisters, therefore there is a whole world of relationships and connections,
ideas and emotions, desires and duties of which the angels know nothing. They
may be more powerful than men, but they are not so versatile. They stand in
fewer relationships, and in riches and depth of the emotional life man is far
superior to the angel. True, Jesus says in Matthew 22:30 that marriage will end
with this dispensation, but nevertheless the sexual relationships on earth have
to a significant extent increased the spiritual treasures of mankind, and in the
resurrection, too, these treasures will not be lost but will be preserved into
eternity.
If to all this we add the consideration that the richest revelation
of God which He has given us is revealed to us in the name of the Father, and in
the name of the Son — who became like unto us and is our prophet, priest, and
king — and in the name of the Holy Spirit who is poured out in the church and
who causes God Himself to dwell in us, then we feel that not the angel, but man,
was created after the image of God. Angels experience His power, and wisdom, and
goodness, but human beings share in His eternal mercies. God is their Lord, but
He is not their Father; Christ is their Head, but He is not their Reconciler and
Savior; the Holy Spirit is their Sender and Guide but He never testifies with
their spirit that they are children and heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ. Hence the eyes of the angels are cast upon the earth, for there God's
richest grace has appeared, there the struggle between heaven and earth is
fought out, there the church is formed into the body of the Son, and there the
conclusive blow will someday be struck and the final triumph of God be achieved.
Hence it is that they desire to look into the mysteries of salvation being
revealed on earth and to learn to know from the church the manifold wisdom of
God (Eph. 3:10 and 1 Peter 1:12).
Angels, accordingly, stand in numerous
relationships with us, and we in many-sided relationship with them. Belief in
the existence and activity of angels is not of the same worth as the belief with
which we trust in God and love, fear, and honor Him with our whole heart. We may
not put our trust in any creature or in any angel; we may not worship the angels
or in any way give them religious honor.13 In fact, there is in Scripture not a
single word about any guardian angel, appointed to serve each human being in
particular, or about any intercession on the part of the angels in our behalf.
But this does not mean that believing in angels is indifferent or worthless. On
the contrary, at the time when revelation came into being, they played an
important role. In the life of Christ they appeared at all turning points of His
career, and they will one day be manifested with Him upon the clouds of heaven.
And always they are ministering spirits sent out to minister for them who shall
be heirs of salvation (Heb. 1:14). They rejoice in the repentance of the sinner
(Luke 15:10). They watch over the faithful (Ps. 34:7 and 91:11), protect the
little ones (Matt. 18:10), follow the church in its career through history (Eph.
3:10), and bear the children of God into Abraham's bosom (Luke
16:22).
Therefore we are to think of them with respect and speak of them with
honor. We are to give them joy by our repentance. We are to follow their example
in the service of God and in obedience to His word. We are to show them in our
own hearts and lives and in the whole of the church the manifold wisdom of God.
We are to remember their fellowship and together with them declare the mighty
works of God. Thus there is difference between men and angels, but there is no
conflict; differentiation but also unity; distinction but also fellowship. When
we arrive at Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
then we come also to the many thousands of angels and rebind the tie of unity
and love that was broken by sin (Heb. 12:22). Both they and we have our own
place in the rich creation of God and achieve our peculiar function there.
Angels are the sons, the mighty heroes, the powerful hosts of God. Men were
created in His image and are God's generation. They are His race.
* * * *
*
If the image of God is the distinguishing earmark of man, we owe it to
ourselves to get a clear idea of the content of it.
We read in Genesis 1:26
that God created man in His image and after His likeness in order that man
should have dominion over all creatures, particularly over all living creatures.
Three things deserve consideration in that. In the first place, the
correspondence between God and man is expressed in two words: image and
likeness. These two words are not, as many have supposed, materially different,
different in content, but serve to amplify and support each other. Together they
serve to state that man is not an unsuccessful portrait, or a somewhat similar
one, but that he is a perfect and totally corresponding image of God. Such as
man is in miniature. such is God in the large, the infinitely large outline, for
man is such as God is. Man stands infinitely far beneath God and is nevertheless
related to Him. As creature man is absolutely dependent upon God and yet as man
he is a free and independent being. Limitation and freedom, dependence and
independence, immeasurable distance and intimate relation over against God,
these have been combined in an incomprehensible way in the human being. How a
mean creature can at the same time be the image of God — that goes far beyond
our grasp.
In the second place, we are told in Genesis 1:26 that God created
men (the term is plural) in His image and after His likeness. From the very
beginning the intention was that God would not create one man, but men, in his
image. Therefore He immediately created man as man and woman, the two of them
not in separation from each other but in relationship and fellowship with each
other (verse 27). Not in the man alone, nor in the woman alone, but in both
together, and in each in a special way, the image of God is expressed.
The
contrary is sometimes affirmed on the ground that in 1 Corinthians 11:7 Paul
says that man is the image and glory of God and that woman is the glory of man.
This text is frequently abused so as to deny the image of God to the woman and
to debase her far below the level of the man. But Paul is there not speaking of
man and woman considered apart from each other but about their relationship in
marriage. And then he says that it is the man and not the woman who is the head.
And he deduces this from the fact that the man is not from the woman, but the
woman from the man. The man was created first, was first made in the image of
God, and to him God first revealed His glory. And if the woman shares in all
this, this takes place mediately, from and through the man. She received the
image of God, but after man, in dependence upon him, by way of his mediation.
Hence man is the image and glory of God directly and originally; the woman is
the image and glory of God in a derived way in that his is the glory of man.
What we read of this matter in Genesis 2 must be added to what we read of it in
Genesis 1. The way in which woman is created in Genesis 2 is the way along which
she receives the image of God as well as the man (Gen. 1:27). In this is
contained the further truth that the image of God rests in a number of people,
with differentiation of race, talent, and powers — in short in mankind — and
further that this image will achieve its full unfolding in the new humanity
which is the church of Christ.
In the third place, Genesis 1:26 teaches us
that God had a purpose in creating man in His image: namely, that man should
have dominion over all living creatures and that he should multiply and spread
out over the world, subduing it. If now we comprehend the force of this subduing
under the term culture, now generally used for it, we can say that culture in
the broadest sense is the purpose for which God created man after His image. So
little are cultus and culture, religion and civilization, Christianity and
humanity in conflict with each other that it would be truer to say God's image
had been granted to man so that he might in his dominion over the whole earth
bring it into manifestation. And this dominion of the earth includes not only
the most ancient callings of men, such as hunting and fishing, agriculture and
stock-raising, but also trade and commerce, finance and credit, the exploitation
of mines and mountains, and science and art. Such culture does not have its end
in man, but in man who is the image of God and who stamps the imprint of his
spirit upon all that he does, it returns to God, who is the First and the
Last.
* * * * *
The content or meaning of the image of God is unfolded
further in later revelation. For instance, it is remarkable that after the Fall,
too, man still continued to be called the image of God.
In Genesis 5:1-3 we
are reminded once more that God created man, man and woman together, in His
image, and that He blessed them, and that Adam thus begot a son in his own
likeness, after his image. In Genesis 9:6 the shedding of man's blood is
forbidden for the reason that man was made in the image of God. The poet of the
beautiful eighth psalm sings of the glory and majesty of the Lord which reveals
itself in heaven and earth, and most splendidly of all in insignificant man and
his dominion over all the works of God's hands. When Paul spoke to the Athenians
on Mars' Hill, he quoted one of their poets approvingly: For we are also His
offspring (Acts 17:28). In James 3:9 the Apostle by way of demonstrating the
evil of the tongue makes use of this contrast: that with it we bless God, even
the Father, and with it we curse men who are made after the similitude of God.
And Scripture not only calls fallen man the image of God, but it keeps on
regarding and dealing with him as such throughout. It constantly looks upon man
as a reasonable, moral being who is responsible to God for all his thoughts and
deeds and words and is bound to His service.
Alongside of this
representation, however, we find the idea that through sin man has lost the
image of God. True, we are not anywhere told this directly in so many words. But
it is something that can clearly be deduced from the whole teaching of Scripture
concerning sinful man. After all, sin — as we shall consider more specifically
later has robbed man of innocence, righteousness, and holiness, has corrupted
his heart, darkened his understanding, inclined his will to evil, turned his
inclinations right-about-face, and placed his body and all its members in the
service of unrighteousness. Accordingly man must be changed, reborn, justified,
cleansed, and sanctified. He can share in all these benefits only in the
fellowship with Christ who is the Image of God (2 Cor. 4:4 and Col. 1:15) and to
whose image we must be conformed (Rom. 8:29). The new man, accordingly, who is
put in the fellowship with Christ through faith, is created in accordance with
God's will in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24) and is constantly
renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Col. 3:10). The
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, which the believer obtains through the
fellowship with Christ, have their origin, and example, and final purpose in God
and they cause man again to share in the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
It is
upon this teaching of Holy Scripture that the distinction usually made in
Reformed theology between the image of God in the broader and the narrower sense
is based. If, on the one hand, after his fall and disobedience, man continues to
be called the image and offspring of God, and, on the other hand, those virtues
by which he especially resembles God have been lost through sin and can only be
restored again in the fellowship with Christ, then these two propositions are
compatible with each other only if the image of God comprises something more
than the virtues of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The Reformed
theologians recognized this, and over against the Lutheran and the Roman
theologians they maintained it.
The Lutherans do not make the distinction
between the image of God in the broader and in the narrower sense. Or, if they
do make the distinction, they do not attach much importance to it nor understand
its significance. For them the image of God is nothing more or less than the
original righteousness, that is, the virtues of knowledge, righteousness, and
holiness. They recognize the image of God only in the narrower sense and do not
appreciate the need of relating this image of God to the whole human nature.
Thus the religio-moral life of man is held to be a special and isolated area. It
is not related to, and it exercises no influence upon, the work to which man is
called in state and society, and in art and science. Once the Lutheran Christian
shares in the forgiveness of sins and the fellowship with God through faith, he
has enough. He rests in that, and enjoys it, and does not concern himself to
relate this spiritual life, backwards, to the counsel and election of God, and,
forwards, to the whole earthly calling of man.
From this, in the other
direction, it follows that man, when through sin he has lost the original
righteousness, is bereft of the whole image of God. Nothing of it is left him,
not even small remains: and so his rational and moral nature, which is still
his, is underestimated and maligned.
The Roman Catholics, on the contrary, do
make a distinction between the image of God in the broader and narrower sense,
although they do not usually employ these words for it. And they, too, are
concerned to find a relationship between the two. But for them this relationship
is external, not internal; it is artificial, not real; mechanical, not organic.
The Romans present the matter as though man is conceivable without the virtues
of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness (the image of God in the narrower
sense) and can in reality also exist thus. In that event, too, man still has
some religious and moral life but only in such a kind and to such a degree as
can come from natural religion and natural morality. It is a religion and
morality which, as it were, remains limited to this earth, and it can never pave
the way for him to heavenly blessedness and the immediate vision of God.
Besides, although in the abstract it is possible that such a natural person can,
without possessing the image of God in the narrower sense, fulfill the duties of
natural religion and of natural moral law, still, as a matter of fact, this is
very difficult inasmuch as man is a material, physical, and sensuous person.
After all, desire is always characteristic of this sensuous nature of man. Such
lust or desire may not in itself be sin but it certainly is a tempting occasion
for sin. For, by nature, this sensuous character, being physical, is opposed to
the spirit, and constitutes a threat to it always. The threat is that reason and
will will be overcome by the power of the flesh.
For these two reasons,
according to Roman Catholic thought, God in His sovereign favor has added the
image of God in the narrower sense to the natural man. He could have created man
without this image. But because He foresaw that man would then very easily fall
prey to fleshly desire, and also because He wanted to raise man to a higher
state of blessedness than is possible here on earth, that is, to the heavenly
glory, and to the immediate presence of Himself, therefore God added original
righteousness to the natural man and so lifted him from his natural state to a
higher and supernatural vantage point. Thus a two-fold purpose was achieved. In
the first place, man could now, what with the help of this supernatural
addition, easily control the desire which flesh is naturally heir to; and, in
the second place, by fulfilling the supernatural duties prescribed for him by
the original righteousness (the image of God in the narrower sense), man could
now achieve a supernatural salvation corresponding to his further endowment.
Thus the supernatural addendum of original righteousness serves two purposes for
the Roman Catholic: it serves as a restraint upon the flesh, and it clears the
way for merits to heaven.
The Reformed theologians take their own point of
view between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran positions. According to Scripture,
the image of God is larger and more inclusive than the original righteousness.
For, although this original righteousness has been lost through sin, man
continues to carry the name of the image and offspring of God. There remain in
him some small remains of the image of God according to which he was originally
created. That original righteousness could not, therefore, have been an
endowment, separate and independent, and quite unrelated to human nature
generally. It is not true that man at first existed, be it in thought only or in
actuality also, as a purely natural being, to whom, then, original righteousness
was later superadded from above. Rather, in thought and creation both, man was
one with that original righteousness. The idea of man includes the idea of such
righteousness. Without it man can neither be conceived of nor exist. The image
of God in the narrower sense is integrally related with that image in the
broader sense. It is not accurate to say that man bears the image of God merely:
he is that image of God. The image of God is identical with man, is as inclusive
as the humanity of man. To the extent that, even in the state of sin, man
remained man, to that extent he has preserved remnants of the image of God; and
to the extent that he has lost the image of God, to that extent he has ceased to
be man, true and perfect man.
After all, the image of God in the narrower
sense is nothing other than the spiritual wholeness or health of man. When a
human being becomes sick in body and soul, even when he becomes insane in mind,
he continues to be a human being. But he has then lost something that belongs to
the harmony of man, and has received something in its stead which conflicts with
that harmony. Just so, when through sin man has lost the original righteousness,
he continues to be man, but he has lost something that is inseparable from the
idea of man and has received something instead that is alien to that idea.
Hence, man, who lost the image of God, did not become something other than man:
he preserved his rational and moral nature. The thing that he lost was not
something which really did not belong to his nature in the first place and what
he received instead was something that seized upon and corrupted his whole
nature. Just as the original righteousness was man's spiritual wholeness and
health, so sin is his spiritual disease. Sin is moral corruption, spiritual
death, death in sins and transgressions, as Scripture describes it.
Such a
conception of the image of God permits the whole teaching of Holy Scripture to
come into its own. It is a conception which at one and the same time maintains
the relationship and the distinction between nature and grace, creation and
redemption. Gratefully and eloquently this conception acknowledges the grace of
God which, after the fall, too, permitted man to remain man and continued to
regard him and deal with him as a rational, moral, and responsible being. And at
the same time, it holds that man, bereft of the image of God, is wholly
corrupted and inclined to all evil. Life and history are available to confirm
this. For even in its lowest, deepest fall, human nature yet remained human
nature. And, no matter what acme of achievement man may accomplish, he remains
small and weak, guilty and impure. Only the image of God constitutes man true
and perfect man.
* * * * *
If, now, we try briefly to survey the content
of the image of God, the first thing that comes up for attention is man's
spiritual nature. He is a physical, but he is also a spiritual being. He has a
soul which, in essence, is a spirit. This is evident from what the Holy
Scripture teaches concerning the origin, essence, and duration of the human
soul. As to that origin, we read concerning Adam that he, unlike the animals,
received a breath of life from above (Gen. 2:7) and in a sense this holds for
all men. For it is God who gives every man his spirit (Eccles. 12:7), who forms
the spirit of man within him (Zechariah 12:1), and who, therefore, in
distinction from the fathers of the flesh, can be called the Father of spirits
(Heb. 12:9). This special origin of the human soul determines its essence also.
True, Scripture several times ascribes a soul to animals (Genesis 2:19 and 9:4,
and elsewhere) but in these instances the reference, as some translations also
have it, is to a principle of life in the general sense. Man has a different and
a higher soul, a soul which in very essence is spiritual in kind. This is
evident from the fact that Scripture does ascribe a peculiar spirit to man but
never to the animal. Animals do have a spirit in the sense that as creatures
they are created and sustained by the Spirit of God (Ps. 104:30) but they do
not, each of them, have their own, independent spirit. Man has.14 Because of its
spiritual nature the soul of man is immortal; it does not as in the animals die
when the body dies, but it returns to God who has given the spirit (Eccles.
12:7). It cannot, like the body, be killed by men (Matt. 10:28). As spirit it
continues to exist (Heb. 12:9 and 1 Peter 3:19).
This spirituality of the
soul raises man above the plane of the animal, and gives him a point of
resemblance with the angels. True, he belongs to the sensuous world, being
earthly of the earth, but by virtue of his spirit he far transcends the earth,
and he walks with royal freedom in the realm of spirits. By his spiritual nature
man is related to God who is Spirit (John 4:24) and who dwells in eternity (Isa.
57:15).
In the second place, the image of God is revealed in the abilities
and powers with which the spirit of man has been endowed. It is true that the
higher animals can by sensation form images and relate these to each other, but
they can do no more. Man, on the contrary, raises himself above the level of
images and enters the realm of concepts and ideas. By means of thought, which
cannot be understood as a movement of the brain but must be regarded as a
spiritual activity, man deduces the general from the particular, rises from the
level of the visible to that of the invisible things, forms ideas of the true,
the good, and the beautiful, and he learns to know God's eternal power and
Godhead from God's creatures. By means of his willing, which must also be
distinguished from his sinful desire, he emancipates himself from the material
world and reaches out for invisible and suprasensuous realities. His emotions
even are by no means set in motion merely by useful and pleasurable things
inside the material world but are roused and stimulated also by ideal, spiritual
goods which are quite insusceptible to arithmetical calculation. All of these
abilities and activities have their point of departure and their center in the
self-consciousness by which man knows himself and by means of which man bears
within himself an ineradicable sense of his own existence and of the peculiarity
of his rational and moral nature. Besides, all these particular abilities
express themselves outwardly in language and religion, in morality and law, in
science and art, — all of them, of course, as well as many others, peculiar to
man and not to be found in the animal world at all.
All these abilities and
activities are characteristics of the image of God. For God, according to the
revelation of nature and Scripture, is not an unconscious, blind force, but a
personal, self-conscious, knowing, and willing being. Even emotions,
dispositions, and passions such as wrath, jealousy, compassion, mercy, love, and
the like, are without hesitancy ascribed to God in the Scriptures, not so much
as emotions which He Himself passively undergoes, but as activities of His
almighty, holy, and loving being. Scripture could not speak in this human way
about God if in all his abilities and activities, man were not created in the
image of God.
The same holds true, in the third place, of the body of man.
Even the body is not excluded from the image of God. True, Scripture expressly
says that God is Spirit (John 4:24), and it nowhere ascribes a body to Him.
Nevertheless, God is the creator also of the body and of the whole sensuous
world. All things, material things too, have their origin and their existence in
the Word that was with God (John 1:3 and Col. 1:15), and therefore rest in
thought, in spirit. Moreover, the body, although it is not the cause of all
those activities of the spirit, is the instrument of them. It is not the ear
which hears but the spirit of man which hears through the ear.
Hence all
those activities which we accomplish by means of the body, and even the physical
organs by which we accomplish them, can be ascribed to God. Scripture speaks of
His hands and feet, of His eyes and ears, and of so much more, in order to
indicate that all that man can achieve by way of the body is, in an original and
perfect way, due to God. He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that
formed the eye, shall He not see? (Psalm 94:9). To the extent, therefore, that
the body serves as tool and instrument of the spirit, it exhibits a certain
resemblance to, and gives us some notion of, the way in which God is busy in the
world.
* * * * *
All this belongs to the image of God in the broader
sense. But the likeness of God and man comes out much more strongly in the
original righteousness with which the first man was endowed and which is called
the image of God in the narrower sense. When Scripture puts the emphasis on this
original righteousness, it thereby declares that what matters most in the image
of God is not that it exists but what it is. The main thing is not that we think
and hate and love and will. The likeness of man and God gets its significance
from what we think and will, from what the object of our hatred and love is. The
powers of reason and will, of inclination and aversion, were given to man
precisely for this purpose that he should use them in the right way — that is,
according to God's will and to His glory. The devils, too, have retained the
powers of thought and will, but they put these solely into the service of their
hatred and enmity against God. Even the belief in God's existence, which in
itself is a good thing, gives the devils nothing but trembling, and the fear of
His judgment (James 2:19). Concerning the Jews, who called themselves children
of Abraham and named God their Father, Jesus once said that, if this were so,
they would do the works of Abraham and would love Him whom God had sent. But
because they were doing precisely the opposite and sought to kill Jesus, they
betrayed that they were really of the father the devil and wanted to do his will
(John 8:39-44). The desires which the Jews fostered, and the works which they
did, constituted them despite all their keen discrimination and energy like unto
the devil. And so, too, the human likeness to God comes out not chiefly in the
fact that man possesses reason and understanding, heart and will. It expresses
itself principally in pure knowledge and perfect righteousness and holiness,
which together constitute the image
of God in the narrower sense, and with
which man was privileged and adorned at his creation.
The knowledge which was
given to the first man did not consist of the fact that he knew everything and
had nothing further to learn about God, himself, and the world. Even the
knowledge of the angels and of the saints is susceptible to growth. So was the
knowledge of Christ on earth up to the end of His life. That original knowledge
of the first man implies rather that Adam received an adequate knowledge for his
circumstance and calling and that this knowledge was pure knowledge. He loved
truth with his whole soul. The lie, with all of its calamitous consequences of
error, doubt, unbelief, and uncertainty, had not yet found a place in his heart.
He stood in the truth, and he saw and appreciated everything as it really
was.
The fruit of such knowledge of the truth was righteousness and holiness.
Holiness means that the first man was created free of all taint of sin. His
nature was unspoiled. No evil thought, deliberation, or desire came up out of
his heart. He was not innocent or simple, but he knew God, and he knew the law
of God that was written in his heart, and he loved that law with his whole soul.
Because he stood in the truth, he stood also in love. Righteousness means that
the man who thus knew the truth in his mind, and who was holy in his will and in
all his desires, thereby also corresponded wholly to God's law, wholly satisfied
the demands of His justice, and stood before His face without any guilt. Truth
and love bring peace in their wake, peace with God, and ourselves, and the whole
world. The man who himself stands in the right place, the place where he
belongs, also stands in the right relationship to God and to all
creatures.
Of this state and circumstance in which the first man was created
we can no longer form an idea. A head and a heart, a mind and a will, all of
them altogether pure and without sin — that is something which lies far beyond
the pale of all our experiences. When we stop to reflect how sin has insinuated
itself into all our thinking and speaking, into all our choices and actions,
then even the doubt can rise in our hearts whether such a state of truth, love,
and peace is possible for man. Holy Scripture, however, wins the victory and
conquers every doubt. In the first place, it shows us, not only at the beginning
but also in the middle of history, the figure of a man who could with full
justice put the question to his opponents: Which of you convinceth me of sin?
(John 8:46). Christ was very man and therefore also perfect man. He did no sin
neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Peter 2:22). In the second place,
Scripture teaches that the first human couple were created after God's image in
righteousness and holiness as the fruit of known truth. Thus the Scriptures
maintain that sin does not belong to the essence of human nature, and that it
can therefore also be removed and separated from that human nature.
If sin
cleaves to man from his earliest origin, and by virtue of the nature which is
his, then from the nature of the case there is no redemption from sin possible.
The redemption from sin would then be tantamount to the annihilation of human
nature. But now, as it is, not only can a human being exist without sin in the
abstract, but such a holy human being has actually existed. And when he fell,
and became guilty and polluted, another man, the second Adam, rose up without
sin, to set fallen man free from his guilt and to cleanse him of all pollution.
The creation of man according to the image of God and the possibility of his
fall include the possibility of his redemption and recreation. But whoever
denies the first cannot affirm the second; the denial of the fall has as its
other side the comfortless preaching of human irredeemability. In order to be
able to fall, man must first have stood. In order to lose the image of God he
must first possess it.
* * * * *
The creation of man according to the
image of God — we read in Genesis 1:26 and 28 — had as its nearest purpose that
man should fill, subdue, and have dominion over the earth. Such dominion is not
a constituent element of the image of God. Nor does it, as some have maintained,
constitute the whole content of that image. Moreover, it absolutely is not an
arbitrary and incidental addendum. On the contrary, the emphasis that is placed
upon this dominion and its close relationship with the creation according to the
image of God indicate conclusively that the image comes to expression in the
dominion and by means of it must more and more explain and unfold itself.
Further, in the description of this dominion, it is plainly stated that to a
certain extent it was, indeed, immediately given to man as an endowment, but
that to a very great extent it would be achieved only in the future. After all,
God does not say merely that He will make “men” in His image and likeness (Gen.
1:26), but when He has made the first human couple, man and woman, He blessed
them and said to them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it (Gen. 1:28), and He further gave Adam the particular task of dressing
and keeping the garden (Gen. 2:15).
All this teaches very plainly that man
was not created for idleness but for work. He was not allowed to rest upon his
laurels, but had to go straight into the wide world in order to subdue it to the
power of his word and will. He was given a big, a widely distributed, a rich
task on the earth. He was given an assignment which would cost him centuries of
effort to accomplish. He was pointed in a direction incalculably far away which
he had to take and which he had to pursue to the end. In short, there is a big
difference and a wide separation between the condition in which the first man
was created and the destination to which he was called. True, this destination
is closely related to his nature, just as that nature is closely related to his
origin, but there is distinction all the same. The nature of man, the essence of
his being — the image of God according to which he was created — had to come to
a constantly richer and fuller unfolding of its content by means of its striving
towards its destination. The image of God, so to speak, had to be spread to the
ends of the earth and had to be impressed on all the works of men's hands. Man
had to cultivate the earth so that it would more and more become a revelation of
God's attributes.
The dominion of the earth was therefore the nearest but not
the sole purpose to which man was called. The nature of the case points to that
fact. Work which is really work cannot have its end and final purpose in itself
but always has as its further objective to bring something into being. It ceases
when that objective has been reached. To work, simply to work, without
deliberation, plan, or purpose, is to work hopelessly and is unworthy of
rational man. A development which continues indefinitely is not a development.
Development implies intention, course of action, final purpose, destination. If,
then, man at his creation was called to work, that implies that he himself and
the people who should issue from him should enter into a rest after the
work.
The institution of the seven-day week comes to confirm and reinforce
this conviction. In his work of creating God rested on the seventh day from all
His work. Man, made in the image of God, immediately at the time of the creation
gets the right and the privilege to follow in the Divine example in this respect
also. The work which is laid upon him, namely, the replenishing and subduing of
the earth, is a weak imitation of the creative activity of God. Man's work, too,
is a work which is entered upon after deliberation, which follows a definite
course of action, and which is aimed at a specific objective. Man is not a
machine which unconsciously moves on; he does not turn about in a treadmill with
an unchangeable monotony. In his work too man is man, the image of God, a
thinking, willing, acting being who seeks to create something, and who in the
end looks back upon the work of his hands with approbation. As it does for God
Himself, man's work ends in resting, enjoyment, pleasure. The six-day week
crowned by the Sabbath dignifies man's work, raises him above the monotonous
movement of spiritless nature, and presses the stamp of a Divine calling upon
it. Whoever, therefore, on the Sabbath day enters into the rest of God in
accordance with His purpose, that person rests from his works in the same glad
way as God rests from His (Heb. 4:10). This holds true of the individual and it
also holds true of the church and of mankind generally. The world, too, has its
world's work to perform, a work which is followed and concluded by a Sabbath.
There remains a rest for the people of God. Each Sabbath Day is but an example
and foretaste of it and at the same time also a prophecy and a guarantee of that
rest (Heb. 4:9).
That is why the Heidelberg Catechism rightly says that God
created man good and according to His own image in order that he might rightly
know God his Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal
blessedness to praise and glorify Him. The final purpose of man lay in the
eternal blessedness, in the glorification of God in heaven and on earth. But in
order to arrive at this end man first had to fulfill his task on earth. In order
to enter into the rest of God he first had to finish God's work. The way to
heaven goes through the earth and over the earth. The entrance to the Sabbath is
opened by the six days of work. One comes to eternal life by way of work.
* *
* * *
This teaching of the purpose of man so far rests entirely upon thoughts
which are expressed in Genesis 1:26-3:3. But the rest of the second chapter has
another important constituent element to add to it. When God places man in
paradise, He gives him the right to eat freely of all the trees in the garden
except one. That one He singles out as an exception, the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. Man is told that he may not eat of that tree, and that on the day
he eats of it he will die the death (Gen. 2:16-17). To all that is commanded is
now added one thing that is forbidden. The commandments were known to Adam
partly from a reading of his own heart, partly from God's spoken word. Adam did
not invent them. God created them in him and communicated them to him. Man is
not religiously and morally autonomous. He is not his own lawgiver, and he may
not do as he pleases. Rather, God is his only Lawgiver and Judge (Isa. 33:22).
All those commandments which Adam received now resolved themselves into this one
requirement that he who was created as the image of God should in all his
thinking and doing, and throughout his life and work, remain the image of God.
Man had to remain such personally in his own life, but also in his marriage
relationship, in his family, in his six-day working week, in his rest on the
seventh day, in his replenishing and multiplying, in his subduing and having
dominion over the earth, and in his dressing and keeping of the garden. Adam was
not to go his own way but had to walk in the way that God appointed for
him.
But all those commandments, which, so to speak, gave Adam ample freedom
of movement and the whole earth as his field of operation are augmented, or,
better, are limited, by one proscription. This proscription, not to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, does not belong to the image of God, is
not a constituent element of it, but, quite to the contrary, fixes its boundary.
If Adam transgresses this proscriptive command, he loses the image of God,
places himself outside the fellowship of God, and dies the death. By this
command therefore the obedience of man is tested. This command will prove
whether man will follow God's way or his own way, whether he will keep to the
right path or go astra4y, whether he will remain a son of God in the house of
the Father or want to take the portion of goods that is given him and go to a
distant country. Hence, too, this proscriptive command is usually given the name
of the probationary command. Hence, too, it has in a certain sense an arbitrary
content. Adam and Eve could find no reason why just now the eating of this one
particular tree was forbidden. In other words, they had to keep the command not
because they fathomed it in its reasonable content and understood it, but solely
because God had said it, on the basis of His authority, prompted by sheer
obedience, out of a pure regard to their duty. That is why, further, the tree
whose fruit they might not eat was called the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. It was the tree which would demonstrate whether man should arbitrarily and
self-sufficiently want to determine what was good and what evil, or whether he
would in this matter permit himself to be wholly led by the command which God
had given concerning it and keep to that.
The first man, therefore, was given
something, indeed, was given much to do; he was also given something, though
this was little, which he was not to do. Generally the last requirement is the
more difficult of the two. There are quantities of people who are willing to do
incredibly much for the sake, say, of their health, but who are willing to give
up nothing for it, or at least very little. They regard the slightest
self-denial as an unbearable burden. That which is forbidden gives off a kind of
mysterious lure. It raises questions about why and what and how. It prompts
doubt and excites the imagination. This temptation which emanated from the
proscriptive command the first man had to resist. This was the struggle of faith
which was given him to fight. But, in the image of God according to which he was
created, he also received the strength by which he could have remained standing
and have conquered.
Nevertheless it becomes apparent from the probationary
command even more clearly than from the institution of the seven-day week that
the end or destiny of man is to be distinguished from his creation. Adam was not
yet at the beginning what he could be and had to become at the end. He lived in
paradise, but not yet in heaven. He still had a long way to go before he arrived
at his proper destination. He had to achieve eternal life by his “commission”
and “omission.” In short, there is a big difference between the state of
innocence in which the first man was created, and the state of glory for which
he was destined. The nature of this difference is further illuminated for us by
the rest of revelation.
Adam was dependent upon the change of night and day,
waking and sleeping, but we read of the heavenly Jerusalem that there shall be
no night there (Rev. 21:25 and 22:5) and that the redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb stand before the throne of God and serve Him night and day in His temple
(Rev. 7:15). The first man was bound to the apportionment of the week into six
work days and one day of rest, but for the people of God there remains hereafter
an eternal, unintermittent rest (Heb. 4:9 and Rev. 14:13). In the state of
innocence man daily required food and drink, but in the future God shall destroy
both the belly and meats (1 Cor. 6:13). The first human couple consisted of man
and woman and was accompanied by the blessing: be fruitful and multiply. But in
the resurrection men do not marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the
angels of God in heaven (Matt. 22:30). The first man, Adam, was of the earth,
earthy, had a natural body and so became a living soul, but the believers in the
resurrection receive a spiritual body and will then bear the image of heavenly
man, the image of Christ the Lord from heaven (1 Cor. 15:45-49). Adam was
created in such a way that he could stray, could sin, could fall and die; but
the believers even on earth are in principle raised above this possibility. They
can no longer sin, for whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his
seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God (1 John 3:9).
They cannot fall even to the very end for they are kept through faith unto
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5). And they cannot
die, for those who believe in Christ have, already here on earth, the eternal
incorruptible life; they shall not die in all eternity, and though they were
dead they should yet live (John 11:25-26).
In looking at the first man,
therefore, we must be on guard against two extremes. On the one hand, we must,
on the basis of Holy Scripture, maintain that he was immediately created in the
image of God in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness: he was not at first
a small, innocent child that had to develop into maturity; he was not a being
who, mature in body, was spiritually without any content, taking a neutral
position between truth and falsehood, good and evil; and still less was he
originally an animal being, gradually evolved out of animal existence, who now
at long last by virtue of struggle and effort had become man.
Such a
representation is in irreconcilable conflict with the representation of
Scripture and with sound reason.
Still, on the other hand, the state of the
first man should not be exaggeratedly glorified as is so often done in Christian
doctrine and preaching. No matter how high God placed man above the animal
level, man had not yet achieved his highest possible level. He was
able-not-to-sin, but not yet not-able-to-sin. He did not yet possess eternal
life which cannot be corrupted and cannot die, but received instead a
preliminary immortality whose existence and duration depended upon the
fulfillment of a condition. He was immediately created as image of God, but he
could still lose this image and all its glory. He lived in paradise, it is true,
but this paradise was not heaven and it could with all of its beauty be
forfeited by him. One thing was lacking in all the riches, both spiritual and
physical, which Adam possessed: absolute certainty. As long as we do not have
that, our rest and our pleasure is not yet perfect; in fact, the contemporary
world with its many efforts to insure everything that man possesses is
satisfactory evidence for this. The believers are insured for this life and the
next, for Christ is their Guarantor and will not allow any of them to be plucked
out of His hand and be lost (John 10:28). Perfect love banishes fear in them (1
John 4:18) and persuades them that nothing shall separate them from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord (Rom. 8:38-39). But this absolute
certainty was lacking to man in paradise; he was not, together with his creation
in the image of God, permanently established in the good. Irrespective of how
much he had, he could lose it all, both for himself and for his posterity. His
origin was Divine; his nature was related to the Divine nature; his destiny was
eternal blessedness in the immediate presence of God. But whether he was to
reach that appointed destination was made dependent upon his own choice and upon
his own will.
Notes
Gen. 2:19; 9 :4, 10, 12, 16; Lev. 11:10;
17:11; and elsewhere.
Lev. 19:31; 20:27; and Deut. 18:10-14.
Deut.
18:10; Jer. 27:10; and Rev. 21:8.
Lev. 19:26; Isa. 47:13; and Micah 5:11.
Deut. 18:11.
Lev. 19:26 and Dent. 18:10.
Deut. 18:11 and Isa. 47:9.
Matt. 18:10 and 24:36.
Ps. 103:20 and Col. 1:16.
Gen. 18:2; Judges
18:3; and Rev. 19:14.
Deut. 33:2; Dan. 7:10; and Rev. 5:11.
Dan. 8:16;
9:21; 10:13, 21; and Luke 1:19, 26.
Dent, 6:13; Matt, 4:10; and Rev. 2:9.
Dent. 2:30; Judges 15:19; Ezek. 3:14; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59; 1 Cor. 2:11 and
5:3-4.
Author
Born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen,
Drenthe, Holland, Herman Bavinck was the son of the Reverend Jan Bavinck, a
leading figure in the secession from the State Church of the Netherlands in
1834. After theological study in Kampen, and at the University of Leiden, he
graduated in 1880, and served as the minister of the congregation at Franeker,
Friesland, for a year. According to his biographers, large crowds gathered to
hear his outstanding exposition of the Scriptures.
In 1882, he was appointed
a Professor of Theology at Kampen, and taught there from 1883 until his
appointment, in 1902, to the chair of Systematic Theology in the Free University
of Amsterdam, where he succeeded the great Abraham Kuyper, then recently
appointed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. In this capacity — an appointment
he had twice before declined — Bavinck served until his death in 1921.
C. The
supralapsarian and infralapsarian interpretation of the decree:
(1) Points
of agreement. Both agree:
(a) That God is not the Author of sin (supra as
well as infra).
(b) That Scripture (not philosophy) is the only source of
our knowledge of God's decree (supra as well as infra).
(c) That man's fall
and punishment is not merely the object of God's foreknowledge but of his decree
and foreordination (infra as well as supra).
(d) That faith is not the cause
of the decree of election, neither sin the cause of the decree of reprobation
(infra as well as supra).
(2) Points of disagreement:
(a) In general,
supralapsarianism places the decree of predestination proper above (supra) the
decree to permit the fall (lapsus); while infralapsarianism places the decree of
predestination proper below (infra) the decree to permit the fall (lapsus).
Hence:
Supralapsarianism:
predestination
fall
Infralapsarianism:
fall
predestination
(b) From this general differentiation it becomes
clear that supra and infra differ in regard to their presentation of the order
in the elements of God's plan. The logical order according to supra:
1. a
decree determining the purpose of all things, namely, the revelation of God's
virtues; specifically, the revelation of his mercy in the salvation of a
definite number of possible men; and the revelation of his justice in the
perdition of another definite number of possible men
2. a decree to create
the men thus elected and reprobated.
3. a decree to permit them to fall.
4. a decree to provide a Mediator for the elect and through him to justify
them, and to condemn the reprobate.
The logical order according to infra:
1. a decree to create man in holiness and blessedness.
2. a decree to
permit man to fall.
3. a decree to elect some out of this fallen multitude
and to leave others in their misery.
4. a decree to bring about the
salvation of the elect through Christ. See II, F.
(c) From this again it is
apparent that according to supra men viewed as possible or creatable and
fallible are the objects of the decree; while, according to infra men viewed as
fallen are objects of the decree.
(3) Objections:
(a) To infra:
1.
God's justice does not explain the decree of reprobation. The ultimate ground of
reprobation is God's sovereign will.
2. In order to maintain reprobation as
an act of God's JUSTICE infra places reprobation after the FALL as if in the
decree of reprobation God figured only with ORIGINAL sin and not also with
ACTUAL sins.
(b) To supra:
1. Supra is correct when it maintains that
God's glory is the final goal of all God's works, but the manner in which that
goal will be realized is not thereby given; it is incorrect to say that in the
eternal perdition of the reprobate God reveals his justice only and that in the
eternal salvation of the elect he reveals his mercy exclusively.
2.
According to supra the decree of predestination has for its object possible men
and a possible Redeemer; but just how are we to conceive of a decree concerning
possible men whose actual future existence has not even been determined? 3.
Supra makes the damnation of the reprobate the object of the divine will IN THE
SAME SENSE as the salvation of the elect. This position is not sustained by
Scripture.
(c) To both infra and supra:
1. It is incorrect to define the
final goal of all things as the revelation of God's mercy in the elect and of
his justice in the reprobate.
2. It is incorrect to represent the lost
condition of the reprobate in hell as an object of predestination.
3.
Predestination unto eternal death should not be coordinated with predestination
unto eternal life, for while certain Individuals constitute the object of
reprobation, the human race under a new Head, even Christ, is the object of
election.
4. Both supra and infra err when they regard the various elements
of God's counsel as subordinately related to each other.
5. Both are
one-sided: supra emphasizing God's sovereignty; Infra, God's righteousness,
holiness, and mercy.
(4) The author's conclusion in regard to the whole
matter: “God's decree should not be exclusively described . . . as a straight
line to indicate a relation merely of before and after, cause and effect, means
and goal; but it should also be viewed as a system the several elements of which
are coordinately related to one another. . . . As in an organism all the members
are dependent upon one another and in a reciprocal manner determine one another,
so also the universe is God's work of art, the several parts of which are
organically related.”
The word “predestination,” has been used in more than
one sense: it has been given a broad and a narrow meaning. According to
Pelagianism it is merely the decree whereby God, on the ground of foreseen faith
and perseverance on the part of some, and foreseen sin and unbelief on the part
of others, has determined to give to the former eternal salvation and to the
latter eternal punishment. According to this conception, creation, the fall,
Christ, the proclamation of the Gospel and the offering of grace to all,
persevering faith and unbelief precede predestination and are not included in it
but excluded from it; the decree of predestination is no more than the
assignment to eternal life or eternal punishment. In this way the most
restricted meaning is given to the word predestination, which is then made
entirely dependent upon “the bare foreknowledge of God,” is a matter of
uncertainty, and is not worthy of the name predestination. In that case not God
but man is the maker of history and the arbiter of its destiny. This error has
been sufficiently refuted in the former paragraph. The important difference
between infra- and supralapsarianism. however, must be given more detailed
discussion. At bottom this difference consists in a broader or a more restricted
definition of the concept “predestination.” Augustine accepted a twofold
restriction of this concept: in his system the decree of predestination follows
that concerning creation and the fall, and he generally used the term
“predestination” in the favorable sense, as a synonym for “election,” while he
gave the preference to the term “foreknowledge” to indicate reprobation:
predestination, then, is what God does, namely that which is good; while
“foreknowledge” refers to what man does, namely evil. In general, scholasticism,
Roman Catholicism, and Lutheranism, accepted this interpretation of the term
predestination. Also in the writings of Reformed infralapsarian theologians the
decree of creation and of the fall precedes that of election and of reprobation;
but while most of them were willing to look upon reprobation as a part of
predestination — just so the decree of predestination follows that of the fall —
and to speak of a twin or double predestination, others considered it better to
conceive of predestination as a synonym for election, and to discuss reprobation
separately and under a different name. Now, if the term “foreknowledge” is not
used in a Pelagian sense, and if the decree of reprobation is not withdrawn from
the province of the will of God, as was done by later Roman Catholic and
Lutheran theologians, the difference is not essential but merely verbal. But it.
is characteristic of infralapsarianism that, in the decree, creation and the
fall precede election and reprobation; while supralapsarianism's concept of
predestination is broad enough to include creation and the fall, which are then
looked upon as means to an end: the eternal destiny of rational creatures. In
the Reformed Church and in Reformed theology equal recognition has always been
given to both supra- and infralapsarianism, viewed as interpretations of the
decree of predestination. To be sure, the Dutch confessional standards are
infralapsarian; nevertheless, no ecclesiastical assembly, not even the Synod of
Dort, has ever troubled the supralapsarians. The Lambeth articles of Confession,
purposely leave the question unanswered. Reformed theologians have always
granted charter privileges to both conceptions. Spanheim used to say that in the
cathedra he was supra, but when he was teaching his congregation he was infra.
On the one hand, supralapsarians as well as infralapsarians teach that God is
not the Author of sin, but that the cause of sin lies in the will of man.
Though, as the Omnipotent One. God predestined the fall, and though, as Supreme
Ruler, he executes his plan even by means of sin; nevertheless, he remains holy
and righteous; of his own accord man falls and sins: the guilt is his alone.
“Man falls according to the appointment of divine providence, but he falls by
his own fault.” Also, the supralapsarians did not arrive at their conception by
means of philosophical speculation, but they presented their view because they
considered it to come closer to the teaching of Scripture. just as Augustine
arrived at the doctrine of predestination through his study of Paul, so Calvin
became convinced of the truth of supralapsarianism by means of his reflection on
the Scriptural doctrine of sin. According to his own statement he was not giving
a philosophy but the truth of God's Word. On the other hand, Reformed
infralapsarian theologians are fully agreed that man's fall, sin, and the
eternal punishment of many was not the object of “bare foreknowledge” but of
God's decree and foreordination. Hence, the difference does not concern the
content of God's counsel. Both infra- and supralapsarianism deny the freedom of
the will, reject the idea that faith is the cause of election and that sin is
the cause of reprobation, and thus oppose Pelagianism; both in the final
analysis pay homage to God's sovereignty. The difference concerns only the order
of the decrees. Infralapsarians prefer the historical, causal order;
supralapsarians defend the ideal, teleological order. The former give a more
limited meaning to the concept predestination, and exclude from it a preceding
creation, fall, and providence; the latter subsume all the other decrees under
predestination. The former emphasizes the manyness, the latter the oneness, of
the decree. With the former each of the several decrees has significance by
itself; with the latter all the preceding decrees are subordinate to the final
decree.
The problem is not solved by means of an appeal to Scripture.
Whereas infralapsarianism is supported by all those passages in which election
and reprobation have reference to a fallen universe, and are represented as
deeds of mercy and of justice, Deut. 7:6-8; Matt. 12:25, 26; John 15:19; Rom.
9:15, 16; Eph. 1:4-12; II Tim. 1:9; supralapsarianism seeks its strength in all
those texts that declare God's absolute sovereignty, especially with reference
to sin, Ps. 115:3; Prov. 16:4; Is. 10:15; 45:9; Jer. 18:6; Matt. 20:15; Rom.
9:17, 19-21. The fact that each of the two views leans for support on a certain
group of texts without doing full justice to a different group indicates the
one-sided character of both theories. Though infralapsarianism deserves praise
because of its modesty — it abides by the historical, causal order — and though
it seems to be less offensive and though it shows greater consideration for the
demands of practical life, it fails to give satisfaction. It is just as
difficult to conceive of reprobation as an act of God's justice as it is thus to
conceive of election. Faith and good works, to be sure, are not the cause of
election, but neither is sin the cause of reprobation; God's sovereign good
pleasure is the cause of both; hence, in a certain sense, the decree of
reprobation always precedes the decree to permit sin. Moreover, if in the divine
conscious ness the decree of reprobation follows that to permit sin, the
question cannot be suppressed, “Then why did God permit sin?” Did this
permission consist in a “bare foreknowledge” and was the fall in reality a
frustration of God's plan? But no Reformed theologian, even though he be an
infralapsarian, can ever or may ever say this. In a certain sense he must
include the fall in God's decree; he must conceive of it as having been
foreordained. But why did God “by an efficacious permission” foreordain the
fall? Infralapsarianism can answer this question only by referring to God's good
pleasure, and then it agrees with supralapsarianism. Reprobation cannot be
explained as an act of God's justice, for the first sinful deed at any rate was
permitted by God's sovereignty. Reasoning backward, infralapsarianism finally
arrives at the position of supralapsarianism; in case it should be unwilling to
admit this, it would have to resort to foreknowledge. Add to all this the fact
that infra places the decree of reprobation after the fall, but just where? Is
original sin the only sin that is taken into account by the decree of
reprobation, and in making this dreadful decree does God leave actual sins
entirely out of consideration? If, as infra insists, reprobation must be
referred to God's justice, then instead of placing this decree immediately after
the entrance of original sin, why not place it after the complete accomplishment
— respectively by each reprobate person — of all actual sins? This is exactly
what was done by Arminius — who also included the sin of foreseen unbelief — but
such a procedure would never do on the part of a Reformed theologian.
Reprobation would then become dependent upon bare foreknowledge, i.e., upon man;
man's sinful deeds would then become the final and deepest cause of reprobation;
hence, in order to avoid this error the decree of reprobation was placed
immediately after the fall. But by doing this infra becomes supralapsarian with
respect to all actual sins: reprobation does not precede original sin, but it
does precede all other sin. At first glance infralapsarianism seems to be more
moderate and less offensive than supralapsarianism, but deeper study reveals the
fact that appearances deceive.
Accordingly, supralapsarianism undoubtedly
has in its favor the fact that it refrains from every attempt to justify God,
and that both with respect to reprobation and with respect to election it rests
in God's sovereign, incomprehensible, yet wise and holy good pleasure.
Nevertheless, it is at least just as unsatisfactory as is infralapsarianism, and
perhaps even more so. It wishes to pass for a solution, but in no sense whatever
does it give a solution of even a single problem. In the first place, to say
that the manifestation of all God's excellencies is the final goal of all of the
ways of God is indeed correct; but when supra includes in that goal the manner
in which the divine glory will be revealed in the eternal destiny of rational
creatures, it errs. For, the eternal state of salvation or of perdition is not
in itself the goal, but one of the means employed in order to reveal God's
excellencies in a manner suited to the creature. It would not do to say that God
would have been unable to manifest his glory by saving all men, if this had been
his pleasure. Neither is it correct to say that in the eternal state of the
reprobate God reveals his justice exclusively, and that in the eternal state of
the elect he manifests his mercy exclusively. Also in the church, purchased with
the blood of the Son, God's justice is revealed; and also in the place of
perdition there are degrees of punishment and sparks of divine mercy. The final
goal of all God's work's must needs be his glory, but the manner in which that
glory will shine forth is not thereby given, but has been determined by God's
will; and although there were wise and holy reasons why God purposed the
perdition of many and not the salvation of all, nevertheless these reasons,
though known to him, are not known to us: we are not able to say why God willed
to make use of this means and not of another. A further objection to
supralapsarianism is the fact that according to this view the objects of the
decree of election and reprobation are men considered merely as possibilities
and — as Comrie added — a Christ viewed as a mere possibility. To be sure by
some this element has been eliminated from the supralapsarian scheme. But the
principle which gave rise to this error still remains. Logic requires that a
possible Christ should be added to possible men as the object of election, for
in the decree of election the church and its Head, i.e., the saved and the
Savior cannot be separated.
But even aside from this, the decree of election
and reprobation which has for Its object “creatable and fallible men” is not the
real, but merely a tentative decree. In the end supralapsarianism is forced to
proceed to the infralapsarian order in the elements of the decree. For,
following the decree concerning the election and reprobation of these possible
men comes the decree to create them and to permit them to fall, and this must be
succeeded by another decree respecting these men, who are now no longer viewed
as mere possibilities but as realities — even in the decree — viz., to elect
some and to reprobate others. The logic of the supralapsarian scheme is very
weak, indeed. Supralapsarianism really differs from infralapsarianism only in
this respect, viz., that after the manner of Amyraldism, it prefixes a decree
concerning possibilities to the infralapsarian series of decrees. But just how
are we to conceive of a decree respecting possible men, whose actual future
existence has as yet not been determined? In the consciousness of God there is
an infinite number of “possible men,” who will never live. Hence, the decree of
election and reprobation has for its object “nonentities,” not definite persons
known to God by name. Finally, there is this difficulty connected with supra,
viz., that it makes the eternal punishment of the reprobates an object of the
divine will in the same manner and in the same sense as the eternal salvation of
the elect; and that it makes sin, which leads to eternal destruction, a means in
the same manner and in the same sense as the redemption in Christ is a means
unto eternal salvation.
Now Reformed theologians all agree that the entrance
of sin and punishment was willed and determined by God. It is perfectly true
that words like “permission” and “foreknowledge” do not solve anything. The
difficulty remains the same, and the same questions arise; viz., why, if God
foreknew everything, did he create man fallible, and why did he not prevent the
fall? Why did he allow all men to fall in Adam? Why does he not grant to all men
faith and the blessing of hearing the Gospel? In brief, if God foreknows and
permits something, he does this either “willingly” or “unwillingly.” The latter
is impossible. Accordingly. only the former remains: God's permission is an
“efficacious permission,” an act of his will. Nor should it be supposed that the
idea of permission is of any force or value over against the charge that God is
the Author of sin; for he who permits or allows someone to sin and to perish in
his sin although he was able to prevent him from sinning is just as guilty as he
who incites someone to sin. On the other hand, however, all agree that although
sin is not “excluded” from the will of God it is, nevertheless, “contrary” to
his will; that it is not merely a means to the final goal, but a disturbance in
God's creation; and that Adam's fall was not a step ahead but a fall in the real
sense of the word. It is also a fact that admits of no doubt that, however much
logical reasoning may demur, no one is able to suggest other and better words
than “permission, foreknowledge, preterition, dereliction,” etc. Even the most
outspoken supralapsarian is not able to dispense with these words, neither in
the pulpit nor in the cathedra. For, although it be admitted that there is a
“predestination unto death,” no Reformed theologian has ever dared to speak of a
“predestination unto sin.” Without any exception all (i.e., Zwingli, Calvin,
Beza, Zanchius, Gomarus, Comrie, etc.) have rejected the idea that God is the
Author of sin, that man was created unto damnation, that reprobation is the
“cause” of sin, and that sin is the “efficient cause” of reprobation; and all
have maintained, that the inexorable character of God's justice is manifest in
the decree of reprobation, that reprobation is the “accidental cause” of sin,
and that sin is the “sufficient cause” of reprobation, etc. Accordingly and
happily, supralapsarianism is always inconsistent: it begins by making a daring
leap, but it soon retreats and returns to the previously abandoned position of
infralapsarianism. This is very evident from the works of supralapsarians.
Nearly all of them hesitate to place the decree of reprobation in its entirety
and without any restriction before the decree to permit sin. The Thomists
differentiated between a “negative and a positive reprobation”; the former was
made to precede creation and fall, the latter was made to follow them. This same
distinction, be it in a modified form, recurs in the works of Reformed
theologians. Not only do all admit that reprobation should be distinguished from
condemnation, which is the execution of that decree, takes place in time, and
has sin for its cause; but in the decree of reprobation itself many
differentiate between a preceding, general purpose of God to reveal his
excellencies, especially his mercy and justice, in certain “creatable and
fallible men”; and a subsequent, definite purpose to create these “possible
men,” to permit them to fall and to sin, and to punish them for their sins.
Accordingly, neither supra- nor infralapsarianism has succeeded in its
attempt to solve this problem and to do justice to the many-sidedness of
Scripture. To a certain extent this failure is due to the one-sidedness that
characterizes both views. In the first place it is incorrect, as we stated
before, to define the “final goal” of all things as the revelation of God's
mercy in the elect, and of his justice in the reprobate. God's glory and the
manifestation of his excellencies is, to be sure, the final goal of all things;
but the double state of salvation and damnation is not included in that final
goal, but is related to it as a means. No one is able to prove that this double
state must of necessity constitute an element in the final goal of God's glory.
In all his “outgoing works” God always has in view his own glory; but that he
seeks to establish this glory in this and in no other way is to be ascribed to
his sovereignty and to nothing else. But even aside from this, it is not true
that God manifests his justice only in the damnation of the reprobate, and his
mercy only in the salvation of the elect, for also in heaven God's justice and
holiness shines forth, and also in hell there is a remnant of his mercy and
compassion. Secondly, it is incorrect to represent the lost condition of the
reprobate in hell as an object of predestination. To be sure, sin should not be
referred to “bare foreknowledge and permission”; in a certain sense, the fall,
sin, and eternal punishment are included in God's decree and willed by him. But
this is true in a certain sense only, and not in the same sense as grace and
salvation. These are the objects of his delight; but God does not delight in
sin, neither has he pleasure in punishment. When he makes sin subservient to his
glory, he does this by means of the exercise of his omnipotence, but to glorify
God is contrary to sin's nature. And when he punishes the wicked, he does not
take delight in their sufferings as such, but in this punishment he celebrates,
the triumph of his virtues, Deut. 28:63; Ps. 2:4; Prov. 1:26; Lam. 3:33.
Accordingly, though on the one hand, with a view to the all-comprehensive and
immutable character of God's counsel, it is not wrong to speak of a “twofold
predestination” (gemina praedestinatio); nevertheless, on the other hand, we
must be careful to keep in mind that in the one case predestination is of a
different nature than in the other. “Predestination is the disposition, goal and
ordination of the means with a view to a goal. Since eternal damnation is not
the goal but merely the termination of a person's life, therefore reprobation
cannot properly be classified under predestination. For these two things are in
conflict with each other: to ordain unto a goal and to ordain unto damnation.
For by reason of its very nature, every goal is the very best something, the
perfection of an object; damnation, however, is the extreme evil and the
greatest imperfection; hence the expression `God has predestinated some men unto
damnation' is incorrect.” Hence, no matter how often and clearly Scripture tells
us that sin and punishment were ordained by God, nevertheless, the words
“purpose” (prothesis), “foreknowledge” (prognosis) and “foreordination”
(proorismos) are used almost exclusively with reference to “predestination unto
glory.” In the third place, there is still another ground for the assertion that
those err who coordinate “predestination unto eternal death” with
“predestination unto eternal life,” and view the former as a goal in the same
sense as the latter; while it is true that certain individuals constitute the
object of reprobation, the human race under a new Head, namely Christ, is the
object of election; hence, by grace not only certain individuals are saved, but
the human race itself together with the entire cosmos is saved. Moreover, we are
not to suppose that merely a few of God's virtues are revealed in this salvation
of the human race and of the universe, so that in order to reveal God's justice
the state of eternal perdition must needs be called into being; on the contrary,
in the consummated Kingdom of God all of God's virtues and excellencies are
unfolded: his justice and his grace, his holiness and his love, his sovereignty
and his mercy. Hence, this “state of glory” is the real and direct end of
creation, though even this goal is subordinate to the exaltation of God. In the
fourth place, both supra and infra err when they regard the various elements of
the decree as standing in subordinate relation to each other. Now it is true, of
course, that the means are subordinate to the final end in view, but from this
it does not follow that they are subordinate to one another. Creation is not a
mere means toward the fall, neither is the fall a mere means toward grace and
perseverance, nor are these in turn merely means toward salvation and perdition.
We should never lose sight of the fact that the decrees are as rich in content
as the entire history of the universe, for the latter is the unfoldment of the
former. The history of the universe can never be made to fit into a little
scheme of logic. It is entirely incorrect to suppose that of the series:
creation, fall, sin, Christ, faith, unbelief, etc., each constituent is merely a
means toward the attainment of the next, which as soon as it is present renders
the former useless. As Twissus already remarked, “The different elements of the
decree do not stand to one another in a relation merely of subordination, but
they are also coordinately related.” It is certainly wrong to suppose that the
sole purpose of creation was to produce the fall; on the contrary, by means of
God's creative activity a universe that will remain even in the state of glory
was called into being. The fall took place not only in order that there might be
a “creature in the condition of misery,” but together with all its consequences
it will retain its significance. Christ not merely became a Mediator, which
would have been all that was necessary for the expiation of sin, but he was also
ordained by God to be the Head of the church. The history of the universe is not
a mere means which loses its value as soon as the end of the age is reached, but
it has influence and leaves fruits, for eternity. Moreover, here on earth we
should not conceive of election and reprobation as two straight and parallel
lines; on the contrary, in the unbeliever there is much that is not the result
of reprobation, and in the believer there is much that should not be ascribed to
election. On the one hand, both election and reprobation presuppose sin, and are
deeds of mercy and of justice, Rom. 9:15; Eph. 1:4; on the other hand both are
also deeds of divine right and sovereignty, Rom. 9:11, 17, 21. So, Adam even
before the fall is a type of Christ, I Cor. 15:47ff.; nevertheless, in Scripture
the fact of the incarnation always rests upon the fall of the human race, Heb.
2:14ff. At times Scripture expresses itself so strongly that reprobation and
election are coordinated, and God is represented as having purposed eternal
perdition as well as eternal salvation, Luke 2:34; John 3:19-21; I Pet. 2:7, 8;
Rom. 9:17, 18, 22, etc.; but in other passages eternal death is entirely absent
in the description of the future; the victorious consummation of the kingdom of
God, the new heaven and earth, the new Jerusalem in which God will be all and in
all is pictured to us as the end of all things, I Cor. 15; Rev. 21, 22; the
universe is represented as existing for the church, and the church for Christ, I
Cor. 3 :21-23; and reprobation is completely subordinated to election.
Accordingly, neither the supra- nor the infralapsarian view of
predestination is able to do full justice to the truth of Scripture, and to
satisfy our theological thinking. The true element in supralapsarianism is: that
it emphasizes the unity of the divine decree and the fact that God had one final
aim in view, that sin's entrance into the universe was not something unexpected
and unlooked for by God but that he willed sin in a certain sense, and that the
work of creation was immediately adapted to God's redemptive activity so that
even before the fall, i.e., in the creation of Adam, Christ's coming was
definitely fixed. And the true element in infralapsarianism is: that the decrees
manifest not only a unity but also a diversity (with a view to their several
objects), that these decrees reveal not only a teleological but also a causal
order, that creation and fall cannot merely be regarded as means to an end, and
that sin should be regarded not as an element of progress but rather as an
element of disturbance in the universe so that in and by itself it cannot have
been willed by God. In general, the formulation of the final goal of all things
in such a manner that God reveals his justice in the reprobate and his mercy in
the elect is too simple and incomplete. The “state of glory” will be rich and
glorious beyond all description. We expect a new heaven, a new earth, a new
humanity, a renewed universe, a constantly progressing and undisturbed
unfoldment. Creation and the fall, Adam and Christ, nature and grace, faith and
unbelief, election and reprobation — all together and each in its own way — are
so many factors, acting not only subsequently to but also in coordination with
one another, collaborating with a view to that exalted state of glory. Indeed,
even the universe as it now exists together with its history, constitutes a
continuous revelation of God's virtues. It is not only a means toward a higher
and richer revelation that is still future, but it has value in itself. It will
continue to exert its influence also in the coming dispensation, and it will
continue to furnish material for the exaltation and glorification of God by a
redeemed humanity. Accordingly, between the different elements of the decree —
as also between the facts of the history of the universe — there is not only a
causal and teleological but also an organic relation. Because of the limited
character of our reasoning powers we must needs proceed from the one or from the
other viewpoint; hence, the advocates of a causal world and life-view and the
defenders of a teleological philosophy are engaged in continual warfare. But
this disharmony does not exist in the mind of God. He sees the whole, and
surveys all things in their relations. All things are eternally present in his
consciousness. His decree is a unity: it is a single conception. And in that
decree all the different elements assume the same relation which a posteriori we
even now observe between the facts of history, and which will become fully
disclosed in the future. This relation is so involved and complicated that
neither the adjective “supralapsarian” nor “infralapsarian” nor any other term
is able to express it. It is both causal and teleological: that which precedes
exerts its influence upon that which follows, and that which is still future
already determines the past and the present. There is a rich, all-sided
“reciprocity.” Predestination, in the generally accepted sense of that term: the
foreordination of the eternal state of rational creatures and of all the means
necessary to that end, is not the sole, all-inclusive and all-comprehensive,
purpose of God. It is a very important part of God's decree but it is not
synonymous with the decree. God's decree or counsel is the main concept because
it is all-comprehensive; it embraces all things without any exception: heaven
and earth, spirit and matter, visible and invisible things, organic and
inorganic creatures; it is the single will of God concerning the entire universe
with reference to the past, the present, and the future. But predestination
concerns the eternal state of rational creatures, and the means thereto: but not
all things that ever come into being nor all events that ever happen can be
included in these means. Hence, in a previous paragraph we discussed
“providence” as a thing by itself, although the relation between it and
predestination was clearly shown. In the doctrine of God's decree common grace
should receive a much more detailed discussion than was formerly the case, and
should be recognized in its own rights. Briefly stated, God's decree together
with the history of the universe which answers to it should not be exclusively
described — after the manner of infra- and supralapsarianism — as a straight
line indicating a relation merely of before and after, cause and effect, means
and goal; but it should also be viewed as a system the several elements of which
are coordinately related to one another and cooperate with one another toward
that goal which always was and is and will be the deepest ground of all
existence, namely, the glorification of God. As in an organism all the members
are dependent upon one another and in a reciprocal manner determine one another,
so also the universe is God's work of art, the several parts of which are
organically related. And of that universe, considered in its length and breadth,
the counsel or decree of God is the eternal idea.
Author
Born
on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen, Drenthe, Holland, Herman Bavinck was the son
of the Reverend Jan Bavinck, a leading figure in the secession from the State
Church of the Netherlands in 1834. After theological study in Kampen, and at the
University of Leiden, he graduated in 1880, and served as the minister of the
congregation at Franeker, Friesland, for a year. According to his biographers,
large crowds gathered to hear his outstanding exposition of the
Scriptures.
In 1882, he was appointed a Professor of theology at Kampen, and
taught there from 1883 until his appointment, in 1902, to the chair of
systematic Theology in the Free University of Amsterdam, where he succeeded the
great Abraham Kuyper, then recently appointed Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
In this capacity — an appointment he had twice before declined — Bavinck served
until his death in 1921.
The Covenant View of Herman Bavinck
They which
are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the
children of the promise are counted for the seed.
Romans
9:8
As I mentioned a few months ago, Mr. Roelof Janssen from
Inheritance Publications sent me a copy of their new book, American Secession
Theologians on Covenant and Baptism & Extra-Scriptural Binding - A New
Danger, evidently with the intention that I should comment on it. The second
part of this book consists of Dr. Klaas Schilder’s reflections on our
Declaration of Principles, written originally as a series in De Reformatie
following its formulation at our synod of 1950. Historically these articles are
of significance inasmuch as they contain Schilder’s only substantial reflections
on our churches; and in their own way they do bring out some of the most basic
differences between us. And so it was only after reading them, and in order to
do the book justice, that I turned to the essay of Dr. Jelle Faber which opens
the book, only to find it to be for me even more significant than the articles
of Schilder.
In this paper Dr. Faber examines the positions of seven
early professors of Calvin Seminary, at least six of whom he proposes formed a
consistent line of theological thought -- essentially the same as that now held
by the Liberated Churches (suggesting, no doubt, that those who would remain
loyal to the historical teachings of the Christian Reformed can now best ally
themselves with the Canadian Reformed). As I read this, however, something
struck me as extremely strange. Faber deals with the last two of these men,
William Heyns and Foppe M. ten Hoor, as though they were of one theological cut,
while I recall distinctly how Herman Hoeksema, who studied under both of them,
took strong exception to the teachings of Heyns, while he was quite fond of Ten
Hoor and in a certain way looked upon him as his own theological mentor. Now I
do not have ready access to the extant writings of Ten Hoor, but Faber points
out that he had been a classmate of the great Dutch theologian, Dr. Herman
Bavinck, and a correspondent with him in later life, leading to the likelihood
that their theological positions were essentially similar. This sent me quickly
to the shelf for Bavinck’s great book, Our Reasonable Faith, and in it to the
chapter on The Covenant. I was amazed. Here in most concise form are all of the
essential elements of Herman Hoeksema’s covenant view -- at almost every point
precisely opposite to that of Heyns, Schilder and the Liberated
Churches.
Bavinck begins this study with an extended
treatment of the universal desire of man to escape his inborn sense of guilt,
and the futility of every human effort to do so -- no Common Grace here. With
this he lays the foundation for that principle which runs throughout his work,
"In the whole work of redemption it is God and God alone who manifests Himself
as the seeking and calling One, and as the speaking and acting One. The whole of
redemption begins and ends in Him."
From there he accordingly folds over
into "the fact that the whole of that redemptive work depends upon an eternal
counsel", which he approaches from an essentially supralapsarian point of view
by proposing that of its decrees "The first is election" -- placing it thereby
at the beginning of the divine decrees, which is precisely the principle point
underlying Supralapsarianism.
And so he proceeds to deal with the three
primary decrees: Of the first he says, "Election is not the whole counsel of
redemption, but is a part, the first and principal part, of it. Included and
established in that counsel is also the way in which the election is to be
actualized -- in short, the whole accomplishment and application of redemption."
Secondly he adds, "The Mediator who will prepare this salvation for them is also
pointed out. To this extent Christ Himself can be called the object of God's
election." (implying in effect a kind of justification in eternity). And so "in
the third place ... redemption or re-creation takes place only through the
applicatory activity of the Holy Spirit." And with that he is ready to focus on
the Covenant of Grace itself.
In this there are three things which he
immediately sets forth on the fore - placing him in direct conflict with the
Heyns/ Schilder covenant position.
The first is an emphatic identification of
the covenant with election: "After all," Bavinck writes, "when the covenant of
grace is separated from election, it ceases to be a covenant of grace and
becomes again a covenant of works. Election implies that God grants man freely
and out of grace the salvation which man has forfeited and which he can never
again achieve in his own strength ... So far from election and the covenant of
grace forming a contrast of opposites, the election is the basis and guarantee,
the heart and core, of the covenant of grace. And it is so indispensably
important to cling to this close relationship because the least weakening of it
not merely robs one of the true insight into the achieving and application of
salvation, but also robs the believers of their only and sure comfort in the
practice of their spiritual life." Clearly in Bavinck’s mind a separating of the
covenant from election, as Schilder insists must be done, destroys the idea of
the covenant completely, and makes it a covenant of works.
Accordingly,
Bavinck has absolutely no place for a conditional covenant, as he says: "if this
salvation is not the sheer gift of grace but in some way depends upon the
conduct of men, then the covenant of grace is converted into a covenant of
works. Man must then satisfy some condition in order to inherit eternal life. In
this, grace and works stand at opposite poles from each other and are mutually
exclusive. If salvation is by grace it is no longer by works, or otherwise grace
is no longer grace. And if it is by works, it is not by grace, or otherwise
works are not works (Rom. 11:6). ... But it can be recognized and maintained as
such only if it is a free gift coming up out of the counsel of God
alone."
And so he comes to what the Liberated so often present as the heart
of the whole matter, the promise given centrally to Abraham, and which they are
most insistent must be conditional in order to maintain the responsibility of
man; but Bavinck writes: "The one, great, all-inclusive promise of the covenant
of grace is: I will be thy God, and the God of thy people. ... this promise is
not conditional, but is as positive and certain as anything can be. God does not
say that He will be our God if we do this or that thing. But He says that He
will put enmity, that He will be our God, and that in Christ He wilt grant us
all things. The covenant of grace can throughout the centuries remain the same
because it depends entirely upon God and because God is the Immutable One and
the Faithful One."
This, however, is not all. As Bavinck goes
on, he lays down a series of principles, all of which were to reappear in
Hoeksema’s view of the covenant, and in fact underlay his entire theology.
It
begins with the fact, as Hoeksema often stressed, that there is essentially only
one covenant. So Bavinck writes: "In the first place, the covenant of grace is
everywhere and at all times one in essence, but always manifests itself in new
forms and goes through differing dispensations. Essentially and materially it
remains one."
This covenant, being a covenant of grace and not of works,
cannot be broken: "The covenant of grace can throughout the centuries remain the
same because it depends entirely upon God and because God is the Immutable One
and the Faithful One. The covenant of works which was concluded with man before
the fall was violable and it was violated, for it depended upon changeable man.
But the covenant of grace is fixed and established solely in the compassion of
God. People can become unfaithful, but God does not forget His promise. He
cannot and may not break His covenant; He has committed Himself to maintaining
it with a freely given and precious oath: His name, His honor, and His
reputation depends on it. It is for His own sake that He obliterates the
transgressions of His people and remembers their sins no more. Therefore the
mountains may depart and the hills removed, but His kindness will not depart
from us, nor shall the covenant of His peace be removed, says the Lord who has
mercy on us (Isa. 54:10)."
Possibly most significant of all, Bavinck
presents the covenant as being organic in nature: "The ... covenant of grace is
that in all of its dispensations it has an organic character ... The elect,
accordingly, do not stand loosely alongside of each other, but are one in Christ
... It is one communion or fellowship, endeavoring to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace," This perhaps more basically than anything
separates his view from that of Schilder, who, like Abraham Kuyper before him
"had a preference for judicial categories and for terms like statute, obligation
and legal status, defined by the speaking God, the God of the Word, both for
those who will respond positively, and for those whose response will be
negative." Meanwhile, however, the Rev’s H. Danhof and H. Hoeksema had followed
Bavinck’s suggestion and focused on the organic relationship of friendship as
the heart of their covenantal thought. To them the idea of the covenant as a
living relationship was far more Biblical and far richer in thought than that of
a legal right to something that might not even be realized in the end.
Seeing the covenant as related so closely with election, Bavinck saw, as
Hoeksema did after him, this election following often, if not usually, in the
line of believing generations: "Grace is not a legacy which is transferred by
natural birth, but does flow on in the river-bed which has been dug out in the
natural relationships of the human race. The covenant of grace does not ramble
about at random, but perpetuates itself, historically and organically, in
families, generations, nations."
The works of the covenant then follow as
a result of covenant grace, rather than as a condition to its fulfillment: "the
covenant of grace ... realizes itself in a way which fully honors man's rational
and moral nature. It is based on the counsel of God, yes, and nothing may be
subtracted from that fact ... But that will is not a necessity, a destiny, which
imposes itself on man from without, but is, rather, the will of the Creator of
heaven and earth, One who cannot repudiate His own work in creation or
providence, and who cannot treat the human being He has created as though it
were a stock or stone ... This accounts for the fact that the covenant of grace,
which really makes no demands and lays down no conditions, nevertheless comes to
us in the form of a commandment, admonishing us to faith and repentance ... the
covenant of grace is pure grace, and nothing else, and excludes all works. It
gives what it demands, and fulfills what it prescribes. The Gospel is sheer good
tidings, not demand but promise, not duty but gift."
Moreover, such
covenant life flows from the will which is directed by reason, rather than as a
blind faith in what appears to be contradictory: "The will of God realizes
itself in no other way than through our reason and our will. That is why it is
rightly said that a person, by the grace He receives, himself believes and
himself turns from sin to God."
And, finally, the presence of unbelievers
in the covenant is only in appearance, as in the Biblical figure of the chaff
among the wheat: "But there can also be persons who are taken up into the
covenant of grace as it manifests itself to our eyes and who nevertheless on
account of their unbelieving and unrepentant heart are devoid of all the
spiritual benefits of the covenant. ... In the days of the Old Testament by no
means all were Israel which were of Israel (Rom. 9:6), for it is not the
children of the flesh but the children of the promise that are counted for the
seed (Rom. 9:8 and 2:29). And in the New Testament church there is chaff in the
grain, evil branches on the vine, and earthen as well as golden vessels. There
are people who display a form of godliness, but who deny the power thereof ...
there are no two covenants standing loosely alongside of each other, it can be
said that there are two sides to the one covenant of grace. One of these is
visible to us; the other also is perfectly visible to God, and to Him alone. ...
But in the final analysis it is not our judgment, but God's that determines. He
is the Knower of hearts and the Trier of the reins. With Him there is no
respecting of persons. Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the
heart ... Let everyone, therefore, examine himself, whether he be in the faith,
whether Jesus Christ be in him."
From all of this it would seem apparent
that among Secession theologians there arose at least four different strains of
covenant theology:
The presupposed unregeneration of the Netherlands
Reformed.
The presupposed regeneration of Abraham Kuyper.
The
conditional covenant of Heyns and Schilder.
And that of Herman Bavinck,
who, few would doubt, represented the mainstream of Dutch Reformed
theology.
It was in this latter, it would seem, that Herman Hoeksema was
taught by Prof. ten Hoor. And, although Hoeksema has often been dismissed
lightly as rationalistic and one-sided, as it becomes so apparent that he was
simply following in the footsteps of Herman Bavinck, possibly the greatest of
all Dutch Reformed theologians, there is great reason to give his teachings more
serious study and concern than they have generally received thus far.
(Inasmuch as Our Reasonable Faith is no longer in print, the Eerdmans Publishing
Co. has granted me permission to reproduce this chapter on The Covenant of Grace
in limited numbers. If, therefore, anyone would like to have a copy of it, and
read this treatment through in complete context, they may contact me:
616-345-4556; bjw@sibd.org , or 1355 Bretton Drive, Kalamazoo, MI
49006.)
The Last Things, by Herman Bavinck
Reviewed by Harry
Zekveld
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 6, no. 4 (October
1997)
Bavinck, Herman, The Last Things: Hope for This World and
the Next. John Bolt, ed., John Vriend, trans. Grand Rapids, U.S.A., and
Carlisle, U.K.: Baker Books and Paternoster Press, 1996, 205 pp. (Note: Since
the editor approached me too late in the day to provide an extensive review of
this book, I simply agreed to introduce it as the first fruit of the project to
translate Gereformeerde Dogmatiek [Reformed Dogmatics].)
The Last Things is
the first installment of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society’s initial
project—the complete, definitive translation of Bavinck’s four-volume magnum
opus Reformed Dogmatics (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek). It is Volume Four of that
work. “The DRTS was formed in 1994 by a group of business-people and
professionals, pastors, and seminary professors, representing five different
Reformed denominations, to sponsor the translation and facilitate the
publication in English of classic Reformed theological and religious literature
published in the Dutch language” (Preface, p. 7). We might add that the DRTS
have favored us with a recent graphite sketch of Herman Bavinck on the opening
page.
The name Herman Bavinck brings back childhood memories of looking up at
Bavinck’s work De Algemeene Genade high on my father’s bookshelf. The
neo-Calvinist thinking of this Dutch Reformed Theologian was introduced to me by
my college professors. But only as I read through his translated works Our
Reasonable Faith [Magnalia Dei, 1909; trans. by Henry Zylstra] and The Doctrine
of God [Vol. II of Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 3rd ed., 1918; trans. by William
Hendriksen] in seminary did I become an admirer of this great Reformed thinker.
Born in 1854, and raised in the experimental Calvinism of the Dutch Second
Reformation (the Nadere Reformatie), Bavinck went on to face full-blown
modernism in his studies at the University of Leiden; then to teach theology at
the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Churches (Christelijke
Gereformeerde Kerken) at Kampen in 1882; and finally, in 1902—as Abraham Kuyper
left the Free University for a time to take on the Prime Ministership of the
Netherlands—to join the faculty as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Free
University of Amsterdam where he served until his death in 1921.
That Bavinck
is a highly valuable teacher for every student of Reformed theology is clear
from the things that are said of him. Editor John Bolt, who has enhanced this
book with a brief introduction to Herman Bavinck, regards him as one who
“represents the concluding high point of some four centuries of remarkably
productive Dutch Reformed theological reflection” (Editor’s Introduction, p. 9).
The article on Herman Bavinck in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Walter
Elwell, ed.) praises his “broad grasp of the history of theology and his notable
philosophical capacity.” Most notable is the fact that Amsterdam’s prince of
theologians is praised by Princeton’s own great theologian, B. B. Warfield. In a
somewhat critical review of Bavinck’s The Certainty of Faith (De Zekerheid des
Geloofs, 1901), Warfield named him “a brilliant [representative]” and “a shining
ornament” of his school of thought. “We must not close [this review]” wrote
Warfield, “without emphasizing the delight we take in Dr. Bavinck’s writings. In
them extensive learning, sound thinking, and profound religious feeling are
smelted intimately together into a product of singular charm” (Selected Shorter
Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. II, edited by John. E Meeter, p.
123).
The reasons for the high praises that others have sung about Herman
Bavinck are all clearly displayed in The Last Things.
The Last Things is
divided into three sections: 1) The Intermediate State, 2) The Return of Christ,
and 3) The Consummation. In each area of eschatology Bavinck fixes our focus
upon the reign of Christ as Creator and Mediator whose redemption will advance
until all creation has been restored to its full splendor in His Parousia. “Just
as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as
the grain of wheat upon the dying 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 of decay” (p. 160).
That the reign of
Christ is for Bavinck the real subject of eschatology, rather than
sanctification, glorification, and tribulation is seen in his statement:
“Eschatology....is rooted in Christology and is itself Christology, the teaching
of the final, complete triumph of Christ and his kingdom over all his enemies”
(122). How necessary is this perspective for an evangelical world caught up in
the last-days madness!
Bavinck interacts ably with philosophy, church
history, Roman Catholic theology, chiliasm and modernism, and consistently rests
squarely upon the testimony of Scripture. “[I]f it is not in Scripture, theology
is not free to advocate it” (p. 62). Another closely related defining mark of
this book is the call to exercise “scriptural reserve.” For example, Bavinck
carefully steers us through the subject of the intermediate state with constant
fidelty to his own opening warning: “The history of the doctrine of the
intermediate state shows that it is hard for theologians and people in general
to stay within the limits of Scripture and not to be wiser than they ought to
be” (p. 44). We are also blessed in this work by brief but careful exegesis of
passages such as sections of Matthew 24, Romans 9-11, and Revelation
20.
There is one caution to be made, however. We wish that Bavinck would have
been more definite in his opposition to universalism when he comes to the matter
of the salvation of pagans and of infants outside of the covenant who die in
infancy. What about Romans 1:18ff, 3:10-21, and 1 Cor. 7:14? Without facing
these and other passages crucial to this discussion, he neither affirms nor
denies their salvation. We would add, however, that his opposition to
universalism is definitely strong in Chapter 6, “The Day of the Lord.”
We are
grateful to the Dutch Reformed Translation Society for making this volume
available to the English-speaking Church, and hope that it will serve to bring
us closer to Scripture and also to one another as members of the long-standing
British and Continental, Princeton and Amsterdam Reformed traditions.
Born of
Dutch immigrant parents in Canada, Harry Zekveld studied at Redeemer College in
Ontario, and then at the Mid-America Reformed Seminary which was then located in
Iowa. He is now serving as pastor of the Cornerstone Orthodox Reformed Church in
Sanborn, Iowa, a member church of the United Reformed Churches of North
America
Grazia Comune
Con il concetto di “grazia comune” si è soliti
indicare quell’area di conoscenza di Dio comune tanto al credente quanto al non
credente, ma anche e più precisamente esso è riferito al fatto che in questa
vita Dio tratta tutti gli uomini, eletti o meno, molto meglio di quanto essi
meritino, in quanto Egli manda “sole e pioggia su giusti e malvagi”. In realtà
tale area lungi dall’essere una zona franca, testimonia di quanto l’uomo
peccatore risulti essere lontano da Dio. Infatti il concetto di grazia comune
pur avendo un contenuto positivo rimanda all’interna contraddizione presente
nelle procedure di pensiero dell’uomo non credente, che è sostanzialmente un
trasgressore del patto.
La posizione cattolica
Secondo il
pensiero cattolico l’uomo è creato da Dio in una condizione di precarietà.
Seguendo il pensiero di colui che da parte cattolica è ritenuto interprete
autorevole di tale posizione, Tommaso d’Aquino (1225-1274), che la media a
propria volta dal pensiero di Aristotele, l’uomo è una mescolanza di materia e
forma, cioè un composto di corpo e anima; a causa della natura della materia che
occupa il gradino più basso nella scala dell’essere, tale composto è orientato
alla precarietà e al conflitto, al non essere più che all’essere,
all’irrazionalità più che alla ragione. L’uomo pertanto esce dalle mani del
creatore già con un difetto di fabbricazione (un “morbus” o “languor” affermerà
il cardinale Bellarmino in occasione dei lavori del Concilio di Trento). Ed è
proprio a causa della propria costituzione “mista”, l’uomo risulta
originariamente essere tanto in contatto con la verità quanto con l’errore (con
l’essere e con il non essere). Per preservare l’armonia tra gli elementi opposti
del corpo e dell’anima, e dunque sottomettere la carne allo spirito, Dio concede
all’uomo il dono sovrannaturale della “giustizia originaria” (bonum
superadditum), tale dono è inteso a contenere i guasti della “corporeità”
donando forza all’anima razionale per orientarsi al proprio fine che è quello di
fare la volontà di Dio. Con la caduta, l’uomo perde solo il dono della
“giustizia originaria”, pertanto le sue facoltà conoscitive permangono
sostanzialmente integre, esse tornano cioè allo stadio precedente al dono della
“giustizia originaria”. L’uomo caduto secondo il pensiero tomista, è l’uomo così
come originariamente uscito dalle mani di Dio.
La ragione secondo
Roma
L’uomo essendo stato creato ad immagine e somiglianza di Dio, è in
possesso della facoltà della ragione (oltre che della volontà e della libertà),
egli è perciò già perfettamente attrezzato per conoscere se stesso e il creato
che lo circonda senza alcuna assistenza da parte di Dio, l’unico elemento di
perturbazione è proprio la presenza in se stesso di un elemento non-razionale
cioè materiale; se l’uomo fosse stato creato tutto intelletto e volontà non
soffrirebbe nessun tipo di interferenza. Pertanto le difficoltà “conoscitive” di
Adamo sono legate ad una imperfezione attribuibile soltanto a Dio. Adamo era
potenzialmente in grado, anche senza alcun aiuto da parte di Dio, di rapportarsi
in modo conoscitivamente vero al creato, l’aiuto sovrannaturale gli permetteva
soltanto un indirizzo più sicuro, di modo che le operazioni del proprio
intelletto non venissero distratte in alcun modo. Adamo con la caduta perdette
la grazia sovrannaturale, ma conservò tutte le peculiarità della propria natura,
ossia ritornò allo stato precedente all’infusione della grazia sovrannaturale da
parte di Dio.
In questa concezione il creato non è inteso essere una
rivelazione di Dio, esso è nella propria totalità un insieme di “fatti bruti”
ossia di fatti senza significato alcuno, in attesa che l’uomo dia, con la
propria ragione, ad essi un senso. Mentre per il pensiero riformato la
rivelazione generale circonda l’uomo completamente non concedendo ad esso di
guardare ad altro che non sia Dio, per il cattolicesimo la rivelazione generale
si colloca nella regione del non-essere. La rivelazione generale non è lo sfondo
sul quale avvengono tutte le operazioni conoscitive dell’uomo, ma soltanto uno
dei tavoli su cui viene giocata l’impresa conoscitiva umana. Per il pensiero
riformato ogni fatto della realtà si colloca all’interno di un sistema governato
da Dio. I fatti per tale motivo acquistano significato e si offrono
“rivelativamente” alla conoscenza. Più precisamente l’uomo conosce propriamente
quanto è in lui e quanto lo circonda, solo perché è strutturato in modo da
esprimere un tipo di conoscenza “analogica”, ossia di essere “interprete” di
Dio. Senza presupporre a monte di ogni operazione conoscitiva, la rivelazione
della conoscenza del Dio cristiano, nessun fatto empirico o psicologico potrebbe
più essere distinto dall’altro.
Per il non-credente non è possibile
sciogliere la contraddizione insita nel razionalismo, quando questi afferma che
è la ragione umana, in modo autonomo, a donare significato a fatti che in se
stessi non posseggono alcuna ratio, (Leibnitz nel suo tentativo di codificare la
realtà descrivendola sino al dettaglio più minuto, era costretto a fare questo a
spese del suo sistema di logica, giungendo alla conclusione che vi fossero
“verità di ragione” e “verità di fatto”). Questo divorzio tra fatti e ragione
era quanto il serpente proponeva ad Eva.
Nel sistema cattolico l’uomo
peccatore è addirittura in grado di potere comprendere Dio, se adeguatamente
indirizzato. Ciò che impedisce al non credente di essere credente, non è come
nella visione riformata una ribellione che ha contaminato anche la facoltà della
ragione, ma soltanto un non corretto indirizzo della ragione stessa. Il
cattolicesimo ritiene in realtà che non vi sia bisogno strettamente della grazia
sovrannaturale per dirigere la ragione a Dio. La grazia sovrannaturale non
sembra diversa dal ricevere alcune informazioni addizionali rispetto a quelle
già possedute.
La ragione umana e il Mito platonico della
caverna
L’uomo non credente secondo il pensiero cattolico può ben essere
il soggetto dell’allegoria della caverna di Platone (Repubblica libro VII).
Questo filosofo immagina gente che vive nella penombra di una caverna con il
volto costretto a guardare in direzione del fondo della medesima. Ciò che essi
vedono sono solo le ombre che il sole alle loro spalle proietta. Uno di essi è
liberato da tale costrizione e si volta verso il sole, scoprendo pertanto la
natura delle ombre viste sino a quel momento. Per Platone questo uomo non
acquista con la liberazione, una diversa facoltà conoscitiva ma solo mette a
frutto quella che già precedentemente possedeva. Tutto ciò di cui esso
necessitava era avere la testa voltata dalla parte giusta. Alla fine i
prigionieri non possono essere biasimati per il fatto di avere la testa voltata
dalla parte sbagliata, ciò è legato alla loro costituzione. Seguendo Aristotele,
Tommaso d’Aquino afferma che usando la ragione, l’uomo fa giustizia alla
rivelazione naturale che lo circonda, necessitando soltanto di qualche
assistenza per comprendere la rivelazione speciale del cristianesimo. Ma se
cogliamo bene le implicazioni del pensiero tomista, la stessa rivelazione
sovrannaturale dovrebbe limitarsi ad informazioni in merito al fatto che Cristo
e lo Spirito siano venuti nel mondo, poiché in realtà tutto il resto può essere
dedotto da queste premesse utilizzando rettamente la ragione. Se l’uomo può
vedere correttamente nella dimensione del naturale, per quale motivo, date le
giuste premesse, non potrebbe vedere bene anche nella dimensione del
sovrannaturale?
A questo punto potrebbe sembrare che il pensiero
cristiano autentico nulla debba avere a che fare con la ragione. In realtà esso
è il solo che possa tenere nel debito conto la ragione in quanto dono di Dio. Se
l’uomo fosse totalmente ignorante della verità non potrebbe essere interessato
ad essa, ed inoltre se lui è realmente interessato alla verità, deve già
possedere in se stesso degli elementi di verità.
La posizione
riformata
In genere il concetto di “grazia comune”, è presentato a
partire dal brano di Atti 15:25-26: “Egli, che dà a tutti la vita, il fiato ed
ogni cosa. Egli ha tratto da un solo tutte le nazioni degli uomini perché
abitino su tutta la faccia della terra, avendo determinato le epoche loro
assegnate, e i confini della loro abitazione”. Oltre al rifiuto di ogni forma di
razzismo, si evince anche che doni quali le stagioni, i benefici del sole e
della pioggia, l’abilità a ragionare, l’intelletto, le abilità cosiddette
naturali, la sessualità, la capacità di distinguere tra bene e male, la
necessità di congregarsi socialmente e politicamente, derivano tutte da Dio, e
sono occasionate nei confronti dei non credenti, dalla propria misericordiosa
pazienza (Romani 9:22).
Ma nella comunanza è compreso anche il peccato di
Adamo, essendo tutta la razza umana solidale con la caduta di Adamo: “abbiamo
dianzi provato che tutti, Giudei e Greci, sono sotto il peccato,siccome è
scritto: Non v'è alcun giusto, neppure uno.” (Rom. 3:9-10) e “Perciò, siccome
per mezzo d'un sol uomo il peccato è entrato nel mondo, e per mezzo del peccato
v'è entrata la morte, e in questo modo la morte è passata su tutti gli uomini,
perché tutti hanno peccato...” (Rom. 5:12). Tale comunanza non può che rendere
il credente umile, facendolo riflettere sul fatto che non si è migliori di
quanti non hanno accettato Cristo, esprimendo nel contempo cura e preghiera nei
confronti di costoro. Inoltre il comune stato di infermità spirituale deve
condurre ad avere simpatia per quanti soffrono e sono ancora nella miseria
spirituale. Quanto detto non deve distogliere l’attenzione dal fatto che questo
elemento è collocato all’interno del progetto di Dio mirante a glorificare se
stesso. Infatti è detto in Romani 9:17: “Poiché la Scrittura dice a Faraone:
Appunto per questo io t'ho suscitato: per mostrare in te la mia potenza, e
perché il mio nome sia pubblicato per tutta la terra. 18 Così dunque Egli fa
misericordia a chi vuole, e indura chi vuole.
19 Tu allora mi dirai: Perché
si lagna Egli ancora? Poiché chi può resistere alla sua volontà? 20 Piuttosto, o
uomo, chi sei tu che replichi a Dio? La cosa formata dirà essa a colui che la
formò: Perché mi facesti così? 21 Il vasaio non ha egli potestà sull'argilla, da
trarre dalla stessa massa un vaso per uso nobile, e un altro per uso nobile? ”.
L’attitudine di pazienza e di amore nei confronti dell’umanità è sempre
“teocentrica”. Dio aveva trattato generosamente l’uomo che sarebbe diventato
Faraone, donando ad esso ricchezza e fama, ma tutto questo al solo scopo di
indurire il cuore di lui al fine di manifestare la potenza liberatrice
dell’Eterno.
Il concetto di “rivelazione generale”, attraverso gli anni, è
stato sempre più associato a quello di “grazia comune”.
Nella propria opera:
“Common Grace,” Herman Bavinck fa riferimento a questa relazione quando dichiara
che la “grazia commune” è importante perchè essa prepara la strada alla
creazione e alla razza umana per la grazia speciale tramite la quale l’intero
cosmo è salvato. (Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” tr. by R. C. Van Leeuwen,
Calvin Theological Journal, XXIV, pp. 60ff. Aprile, 1989)
Bavinck affronta
questa relazione anche nell’opera Our Reasonable Faith. Parlando di rivelazione
generale e speciale, scrive:
La Grazia è il contenuto di entrambe le
rivelazioni, comune nella prima, speciale nella seconda, ma in modo tale che
l’una è indispensabile per l’altra.
È la grazia comune che rende la grazia
speciale possibile, prepara la strada per essa e in seguito la supporta; e la
grazia speciale, da parte propria, conduce la grazia comune al suo stesso
livello e pone essa al proprio servizio. (Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956), p. 38.)
Louis Berkhof,
intende la rivelazione generale come un mezzo attraverso il quale la grazia
commune opera. Appellandosi a Romani 2:14-15, Berkhof afferma che la rivelazione
generale offer ai non credenti molti doni, ivi inclusa la conoscenza di Dio,
tali doni sono da intendersi come “segni” della grazia di Dio nei confronti dei
reprobi. (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1953), pp. 440, 441)
A. A. Hodge connette la
rivelazione generale e il contenimento del peccato:
“Grazia Comune” è la
contenente e persuadente influenza dello Spirito Santo che opera soltanto
attraverso la verità rivelata nel vangelo, o attraverso la luce naturale della
ragione e della coscienza, elevando l’effetto morale naturale di tale verità
sulla comprensione, coscienza e cuore. Essa non implica alcun cambiamento del
cuore, ma semplicemente un incremento del potere naturale della verità, una
restrizione delle cattive passioni, ed un aumento delle emozioni naturali in
vista del peccato, dovere e auto-interesse. (A. A. Hodge, Outline of Theology
(New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1878), pp. 449, 450.)
William Masselink,
ha cercato di dimostrare la stretta relazione tra rivelazione generale e grazia
comune. Nel suo libro General Revelation and Common Grace, lui nota che le due
non possono essere identificate poichè esse differiscono in origine, scopo e nel
come noi acquistiamo conoscenza di entrambe:
Esse sono connesse, comunque,
perchè nella grazia comune Dio usa le verità della verità generale per contenere
il peccato. I due risultati della rivelazione generale sono: la coscienza di Dio
e la coscienza morale. Per mezzo di questi due risultati, attraverso la grazia
comune di Dio, il peccato è frenato nell’uomo naturale. (William Masselink,
General Revelation and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1953), p. 69.)
Donald McCleod, include la rivelazione generale di Dio
tra gli strumenti scelti da Dio per contenere il peccato, cosa che offre
all’uomo la possibilità di esprimere il bene civico. (Donald McCleod, Behold
Your God (Christian Focus Publications, 1990), p. 121)
Da queste
citazioni appare evidente che la rivelazione generale assume un ruolo importante
nell’intera dottrina della grazia comune. Coloro che non credono che esista una
“grazia comune”, intendono tale dottrina come se essa insegnasse che Dio rivela
Se medesimo agli uomini in due modi: attraverso le Scritture, e allora tale
rivelazione è diretta agli eletti, e attraverso la creazione e la storia, e in
tal caso tale rivelazione è rivolta a tutti gli uomini. Nell’uno come nell’altro
caso abbiamo a che fare con la “grazia”. Dio manifesta con la “grazia comune”
un’attitudine di amore e benignità nei confronti di tutti gli uomini (anche se
alcuni assertori della dottrina affermano che tale grazia è indirizzata
esclusivamente ai reprobi).
Ciò che però sembra difettare a tale
concezione, peraltro non errata, è come vedremo appresso, l’idea di “contesto”.
Infatti il punto della questione non è tanto stabilire quanto hanno in comune
credenti e non-credenti, quanto piuttosto come esprimere tale comunanza senza
permettere al contempo che l’antitesi tra elezione e riprovazione divina vada
perduta.
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