Our Reasonable Faith

Herman Bavinck

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Originally published in Dutch as Magnolia Dei

This translation by Henry Zylstra © 1956

by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

All rights reserved

Published 1956, 2016 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-8028-7489-4

www.eerdmans.com

Contents

Preface

I. Man’s Highest Good

II. The Knowledge of God

III. General Revelation

IV. The Value of General Revelation

V. The Manner of Special Revelation

VI. The Content of Special Revelation

VII. The Holy Scriptures

VIII. Scripture and Confession

IX. The Being of God

X. The Divine Trinity

XI. Creation and Providence

XII. The Origin, Essence, and Purpose of Man

XIII. Sin and Death

XIV. The Covenant of Grace

XV. The Mediator of the Covenant

XVI. The Divine and Human Nature of Christ

XVII. The Work of Christ in His Humiliation

XVIII. The Work of Christ in His Exaltation

XIX. The Gift of the Holy Spirit

XX. The Christian Calling

XXI. Justification

XXII. Sanctification

XXIII. The Church of Christ

XXIV. Eternal Life

Indexes

Preface

Those who are at all familiar with the history of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands—that is, of the Gereformeerde as distinguished from the Hervormde kerken—will know that among the heirs of the Afscheiding of 1834 and the Doleantie of 1886 no two names are held in such esteem as the names of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck. They were heroic figures of giant accomplishment in Christian endeavor. Their career at roughly the same time at the end of the last and the beginning of this century must be regarded as a special favor of God for the benefit of historic Christianity in both Europe and the new world.

The two men, who in time came to be mentioned so often in one breath as co-stalwarts of the Reformed cause in Holland, have often been compared and contrasted. Somebody put the difference between them in this way: “In Kuyper we have an example of scintillating genius, in Bavinck an example of clear-headed talent.” The Rev. J. H. Landwehr, Bavinck’s first biographer, reports another contrast: “Bavinck was an Aristotelian, Kuyper a Platonic spirit. Bavinck was the man of the clear concept, Kuyper the man of the fecund idea. Bavinck worked with the historically given; Kuyper proceeded speculatively by way of intuition. Bavinck’s was primarily an inductive mind; Kuyper’s primarily deductive.” The two men complemented each other in the renascence of Calvinist vitality in nineteenth century Dutch life and thought.

Herman Bavinck was born on December 13, 1854. The centennial of his birth was widely celebrated in the Netherlands in 1954, and the nature and scope of his contributions were appreciatively reviewed. Bavinck was born in the town of Hoogeveen in the province of Drenthe. His people originally came from the county or earldom of Bentheim. His father, ...