Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics: The Suit Makes the Man

In the previous post Bavinck suggested that religion has more of a connecting point to real life than people give it credit. Sacrifice was the hinge on which the everyday working life and the door of salvation turned in the ancient world. For Bavinck this is the stock and trade of all theology: the vicarious atonement of Christ. Dogmatics has (historically) had a difficult time processing and presenting this momentous truth, yet there is no doubt to its certainty. The humility of Christ assuming human nature supports this. Believing it, however, is another matter.

After studying the sacrifices of the Old Testament one might wonder if more ink has been spilled on the topic than blood. Christ’s sacrifice was puzzled over from Irenaeus to Anselm, and especially with the latter, no one followed without revision. The great theme behind the OT sacrifices is mercy. The sacrifices did not cover the whole of life, says Bavinck, they only served as a reminder of sin and typologically pointed to another, better sacrifice. How so? The Prophets (and those speaking in a prophetic spirit) teach the spiritual nature of sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22; Hos. 6:6) and promise the Messiah (Ps. 110; Jer. 23:6). Prophetic testimony, in the estimation of the New Testament, prescribes the Messiah’s human nature, humiliation, sufferings, and the priesthood in Christ’s sacrifice: the Old Covenant is fulfilled in him.

The New Testament’s view of Christ’s humiliation is multifaceted. He is, “the law and the gospel in his own person.” Christ is the message himself, “not inspiration, but incarnation.” God didn’t speak to Christ as with Moses, says Bavinck, but spoke through him. Christ paid a ransom as the paschal lamb; he was the means of the expiation of sin, a sacrifice of atonement, and the ‘curse’ which removed the curse of the law. Supposing Christ’s active and passive obedience to God in his humiliation, together with the testimonies of the law and gospel uniting in his person, it stands to reason that his substitutionary life and death produced complete redemption: thus unifying the Church body to the head. It has. But not without a wrinkle.

There is a long standing tradition in Christian theology that pitches the law against the gospel as bi-polar opposites. The God of love is virtually wholly other next to the God of justice. These Marconian views have always been rejected for splitting the unifying concept of salvation from sin and from the punishment of sin via the law. Modern theology’s divinization of humans (Hegel) and the attaining the God-consciousness of Christ (Schleiermacher) is not far off, insisting that Christ’s obedience and faithfulness maintained perfect communion with God and not by vicarious atonement. When the law and gospel are split religious certainty maintained by distinction is lost in the muddle of pantheism. Accordingly, the “not-yet-being” of humanity progresses toward becoming divine with the Father’s ‘automatic’ forgiveness for those who attempt (with utter seriousness) to live up to the moral ideals of religion. Bavinck’s response is simply magnificent:

“If sin does not deserve punishment, there is no grace either. In fact, there is no need for forgiveness at all. God wills that we love him and his law, even apart from sin, as the norm of our lives.”

There are many views concerning Christ’s testimony, person, and work. Most of them have a core of truth, unless they marginalize the value of the incarnation and the atonement. And we must be weary, Bavinck would say, of those who assume the filthy rags of human righteousness can be changed for a garment of light on extended credit.