Having grown up Conservative Baptist and worshiping in non-denominational churches I’ve had a fairly nonchalant attitude toward the creed and confessions as a guiding principle of Sunday service. This is not my fault; formal statements can’t claim the same allegiance as scripture, says Spurgeon and the creeds hinder the creative, dynamic energy of worship, says Barth. But two things happened to change my mind about the importance of a confessional form of worship: kids.

Most non-denominational churches offer a myriad of social programs and group activities with a religious component somewhere in the mix. I’ve always had fun at these things but after a while the social component takes the place of the theological component and spiritual growth usually seems to wane. Worship service often struggled for quality content. After a while experimentation takes the place of edification. As a church-goer I constantly felt like I was being experimented on: ‘What programs do you like?’ ‘What message do you need to hear?’ ‘What’s going to make you adhere to our ministry?’ What seemed like an endless freedom for the substitution of the creeds was turning into a Sartre-like nightmare of boundless freedom.

Now while I was going through all this I was reading staple theology from all the reformed quarters, most notably the Puritans. (save for article)

The two theoretical strongholds keeping me from being totally Reformed were the creeds and infant baptism. These two items make the church seem like a crusty old institutional wife instead of the young, bright, sexy co-ed image that the emerging church likes to project. When taken to task on infant-baptism as a sign of Church ‘institution’ (as opposed to the vibrant, organic, pilgrim church) Calvin simply shrugged (Milner). Richard Baxter thought ‘what am I saying if I don’t baptize children?’ (Packer). So the giants have it. I’m cool with it.

Next time we pick up with the kids, confessionalism, and why becoming Reformed is so chill.

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

There is very little consensus, says G.K. Beale, on the literary outline of John’s Revelation. This affects the time line. In our passage here, the verb tenses are all past and completed meaning the time points back to the previous woe (vs. 14) or looks forward to the ‘established kingdom’ resulting in praise from the heavenly host. Either way, the passage reflects the glory and fulfillment of Christ’s priestly reign, evident from the song of the heavenly multitude.

Two interesting notes on Cowper’s exposition on verse 15. First, he ascribes the song in 15b to the angelic host, whereas Beale leans more toward the redeemed saints. Beale cites 7:9; 19:1 and 6 for support and he’s not wrong. Cowper doesn’t back his reason, but it’s easy to see where he’s coming from: In Rev. chapters 4-5 Cowper sees a ‘concentric circle’ of praise starting with the elders, then the creatures, then angels, then the heavenly multitude before reaching earth and back again. Second, Beale sees the only OT reference here to Daniel 7 wherein all evil kingdoms are defeated and given to the Son of Man. Cowper is in the ballpark, comparing the doxological confessions of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 4:31) and Belshazzar (Dan. 5:30, 31) with the joyful host in Rev. 11:15.

In Verse 16, Cowper i.d.’s the elders as the saints, which Beale affirms and clarifies as “comprehending the Old and New Testament saints.” Whereas Beale’s comprehension of the literature, the presentation masterly, clear and organized, Cowper’s exposition contains that one exhortative gem that is usually missing in modern commentaries. The saint’s gestures, writes Cowper, are sitting and kneeling for worship describe two things: I. Their rest: 2. Their quiet and peaceable estate. Now the Saints are pilgrims, wearyed many wayes, but there they rest; now they are in continual warfare, there they sit in peace and quietness. … So long as thou art here, walke with the Lord as [Enoch] did; set the Lord always in thy sight, as David did: there for thy reward, thou shalt sit hereafter for ever in his sight. O what a gaine bringeth godlinesse with it! Lord give us hearts to thinke upon it. (Cowper, 1629: 1,010)


Nicholas Byfield’s (1579-1622) Exposition upon the Epistle to the Colossians (1615/1628 3rd ed.) was regarded by Spurgeon as wordy but worth consulting. He’s right on both counts. Writing in the context of controversy with the Roman Catholic church, Byfield’s exposition of Colossians 1:21 is now as applicable to certain modern day controversies over assurance of faith, such as the NPP, as it was then. Such controversy orbits each generation of the church. Byfield’s commentary on vs. 21 begins with the assertion that vv. 19, 20 describe Christ as the redeemer of the universal Church in general and the Colossian Church in particular. He then draws out a few (six) general considerations for application intended for any Christian church. The profit of reconciliation, writes Byfield, “leyes in application.” Experience in meditation, the catechism, prayer and avoiding “securitie and objections (presumption, debate) is testimony to reconciliation and therefore assurance of faith. Assuming one is saved without pursuing the knowledge of Scripture is the stuff of “drowsie Protestants” and no good for anyone. Reconciliation is a work in progress, what we today call an eschatological shift from a former way of life to a new one (Dunn, NIGCNT, p. 107). Byfield’s paragraph on the phrase also (nunide) applies the emphatic, non-temporal meaning to the ‘corporal’ and ‘spiritual’ progress of the Kingdom for all time. Reconciliation and kingdom work are not static or achieved by repetition (although faith and the ordinances are linked together) but is instead tied to 1. Education (hearing the Gospel preached) and 2. Raising kids. “Getting within the Covenant ourselves” is in part a, ‘laboring to amend what by propagation we have marred.”

The grace of reconciliation, originally extended to the Colossians–which freed them from hundreds of years of dead works and alienation to God–is the same reconciliation extended to sinners who come to Christ today through the ordinary means of hearing the Word and taking the ordinances rightly administered.

Byfield is also remembered for his The Rule of Faith: or, An Exposition of the Apostles Creed. You can purchase a 1626 edition for a very good price here.

Scripture affirms that God is eternal and that his being is not determined by time (Isa. 41:4; Rev. 1:8; Ps. 90:2; 93:2, et. al.) or measured by time. Bavinck defends the Scriptural view against the twin rivals of Deism and pantheism which confuse the concepts of time and eternity as mathematical quantity and not as quality: “gradual, not essential.” Deism’s own definition of eternity as time infinitely extended in two directions (past/future) is false, says Bavinck, because time serves for God’s existence. Pantheism asserts that eternity is the substantive cause of time which “pulls God down into the stream of time” (Spinoza) causing God’s existence.

Bavinck’s solution to these arguments rests mainly on Aquinas’ and Augustine’s response to Aristotle: the AAA for theological breakdowns. E.P. Heidemann observes that Bavinck sometimes relies too heavily (i.e. conveniently) on Thomas, or Aristotle.[1] Or in this case Augustine. “Time began with the creature” is a more reliable statement than vice versa: Time, whether intrinsic or extrinsic is something that can be measured and used to measure the duration of things in motion. Hence, concludes Augustine and Bavinck, there can be no time in God. Boethius (bk. V) is also brought in as supporting evidence, but, unfortunately for the reader, Bavinck does not (here) treat the Boethian problem that time violates God’s eternality (p. 163). This will eventually flare up into problems with divine foreknowledge and human freedom in Nelson Pike’s classic God and Timelessness and Paul Helm’s ample reply in Eternal God (ch. 6). For some, Bavinck’s discussion of time is out-dated but he does have the one thing that others do not.

God’s eternity is identical with his being and therefore regarded as the fullness and glory of his being. Bavinck does not often employ analogies anywhere in his work, and compared to older classical works e.g. Stephen Charnock, this keeps the discussion fresh and forward moving. Following Thomas’ analogy, God does not inhabit eternity like an idle person suffering from boredom, but like “a cheerful laborer, for whom time barely exists and days fly by.” There is difference between time and eternity but the distinction is a formal one assuming time is innate without self-existence and consciousness. God’s consciousness alone comprehends time, making time subservient to his eternal rule (1 Tim. 1:17).

A fine example of Cowper’s talent for doctrinal/practical exposition comes from his treatise: A Defiance to Death (4th ed. 1629). Defiance to death is for the most part a running commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:1-9, stopping at key words and phrases to illustrate the text with biblical and extra-biblical examples. The outset of Cowper’s argument is to address the fear of death and even find comfort in the conclusion that the life of faith finds death to be no more than “translation” and an exchange for the better (dissolution). The certainty of this is grounded in the Word, “And … we know it by the persuasion of faith, which is proper onely to Gods elect children effectually called.” This already sounds like a recipe for tensions and butting heads, so what’s the solution?

Writing on vs. 5, Who hath also given us the earnest of the Spirit , Cowper finds the substance of the Apostle’s certainty. No matter how little grace we receive, says Cowper, God shall increase it through the giving of the Spirit. From Eph. 1:13, Acts 8:27 and 10:1, the Sprit leads and directs the Church and her ministers by the grace of the Word:

“Thus we see, how God, who gives the grace, gives it by the ministry of the Word. God hath linked in one chaine all the meanes of salvation, and man should not presse to sunder them: they who call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved: but how shall thy call on him, who on whom they beleeve not? How shat they beleeve but by hearing? How shall they heare, but by preaching? & how shall men preach, except they be sent? I will not so be content with preaching, that I neglect praier, that I despise preaching: for he can never reciece grace from God, who despises the meanes by which it pleases God to give it.” (Cowper, 1629, p. 565)

The human experience of God’s wrath and love, guilt and forgiveness, presence and abandonment coupled with the texts that describe God as being, unchangeable in his own nature have lead to the doctrine of divine immutability. Following a careful exegesis of the divine name(s), Bavinck’s analysis of God’s incommunicable attributes of independence and immutability is harvested from Philo, Irenaeus and Augustine to Bernard, Anselm, and John of Damascus. The Open Theism controversy within the last decade – whose conceptual roots are aligned with ‘process’ theology rather than Arminianism (as is usually claimed within evangelical circles) would be no shock to Bavinck. For Bavinck the most serious challenge does not come within mainline orthodoxy but stems from “pantheistic criticism” from without.

For the orthodox Christian, Pantheism is like being stranded on an island facing a polar bear that over a few seasons vanishes from sight. Eventually the narrative of pantheism breaks down into a confusing labyrinth leading to vague conclusions and disappointment. We must, affirms Bavinck, rejoice in the light of scripture and hold fast the confessions.

Our knowledge of God, patterned after scripture, does not limit God because it is established in him: creation is revelation and scripture affirms it. Pantheism, argues Bavinck, cannot acknowledge God’s independence from the cosmos. They say personality and self-consciousness are contradictory in a boundless being. If so then God’s perfections is the power that holds everything together and directs the cosmic order. That’s not to say God’s power and disposition change with the wind but its close.

Christian theology holds that God’s absolute being is perfect, independent (aseity) and unchangeable – attributes included. If he changed he would diminish or, from an ecological point of view, deplete. Every creature is dependent but has “a distinct existence of its own” (cf. Ps. 24:1). Self-preservation and the free agency of humankind, argues Bavinck, is a weak analogy of God’s independence but proffers enough natural proof to confirm the aseity of God according to scripture. The name of God revealed to Moses (Ex. 3:6) affirms God’s independent immutable being is full of grace: what God was to the patriarchs he will be for his people forever. Pantheism can never arrive at a description of grace or special providence in the believer’s life. When free-will is the highest virtue illumination becomes elusive and nature can only provide so many clues. It’s like a TV show running in syndication. Reruns do not add additional insight: their contents are frozen, doomed to repeat the same scenario over and over. But within the church, the activity of theology and doxology come fresh insight and new strength from the one in whom we live, move, and have our being.

If theology has any object other than God for its starting point it loses its character. Bavinck has been saying this all along: the subjectivity of modern theology led to an untenable mysticism and pantheism that could not be supported by scripture or the confessions. Across the street from the Reformed, Rome has the view that grace compliments nature leaving Christ on the sidelines waiting to enter into the world and be useful. Other views are usually anthropocentric or create a dualism between God and the world that pushes him and his follower’s right out the door. This cloud is unknowing.

But God has revealed himself to humankind, argues Bavinck, sin notwithstanding. Grace has permeated the world (uniquely through Christ) and is sustained by the creator as easily as a potter shapes clay. The church is certain of this from scripture and her constant testing and validating scripture doctrine. So long as Christian dogmatics retains God as her main objective, the church will thrive in worship and in truth (Heb. 12:1-2).

Tie it all together and you have the bedrock underlying the problems between Pelagius and Augustine, Calvin and Pighius, works and imputed righteousness, repentance and participation, Christ and the world. What do you get for knowing God? Pursuing God? The answer is finding God and enjoying him, putting to bed the uncertainty that comes with not knowing if he’s ‘out there’ or finding him only in a brief moment of crisis or something like that. Put another way, pursuing God with the expectation of anything other than finding him is immediately off track and a recipe for disillusionment. What Bavinck is essentially saying is that the loss of objectivity in theology is the thing responsible for much of the confusion, disorganization and apathy that have plagued the modern era church. Yet for all that Bavinck is unmoved. God’s name and character have been revealed in scripture and testified to in nature. Next time we will undertake Bavinck’s exegesis of the Lord’s Name and a formidable challenge to the pursuit of God.

Gleason starts out with the pious background of the Bavinck family. The story centers predominantly on Herman’s father Jan and his pastoral vocation. Gleason’s sympathetic narrative reads like many classic evangelical biographies such as Iain Murray on Pink and Edwards or William Arnot’s Life of the Rev. James Hamilton. Gleason occasionally glosses over some detail with high praise for the strong ideals and values of the Bavincks ministry and home life but the ample footnotes keep the reader on task. Yet Gleason does not go entirely overboard either, presenting the differences between the HK and CRC in a fair and accurate light. Gleason’s ability to remain objective throughout when presenting sensitive issues such as Bavinck’s transition to Kampen, the Bavinck / Kuyper debate on presumptive regeneration and the fallout of the Groningen Synod (1899) is impressive.

Bavinck is all about balancing tensions and so is Gleason. One of the chapters that I felt personally closest to was Bavinck’s first and only pastorate at Franeker (Chapter 4). Bavinck faced all the dilemmas awaiting a young pastor: the work load, congregation politics, and faithfulness to scripture in a dry, positivist climate. According to Gleason, Franeker had a string of pastors that did virtually nothing to benefit the spiritual wellbeing of the congregation yet Bavinck handled his situation with remarkable grace and humility, which I found surprising.. Gleason’s depiction of Bavinck as scholar and pastor is well rounded and multi-dimensional; presenting a man of high principles and a guy you could have coffee with.

“Bavinck has been for me,” writes Gleason, “an inspiration and a challenge. His grasp of theology in all its dimensions, his thoroughness and fairness in dealing with those whom he did not agree … his architectural gift in perceiving doctrine in its correlation with the Christian view as a whole … are some of the excellencies that characterize his work throughout.” Gleason has certainly captured the character and career of this essential theologian in a rare non-stuffy, non-boring lucid biography. We highly recommend this book especially to young pastors and seminarians worried about the great divide between the academy and the church, evangelism and a gospel-centered family. Gleason’s book is available May 31, 2010 from P&R Publications. Pray for hardcover.

There are many names given for God across an array of folk and scientific thinking and experience. God does not need a name because there’s no comparison. Citing W. Robinson Smith’s classic work on Semitic religion, “the Semites loved to call God “Lord or King” because they felt completely dependent upon him; names were not used for philosophical theory but were relational. The revelation of the tetragrammaton to Israel proves that God is more than the “one who is.” He is the “Unchangeable One, (faithful), the eternally Self-consistent One, who never leaves or forsakes his people but always again seeks out and saves his own.” His grace, love, and assistance are unchanging because he is so in himself.

Next time we will look pause to consider what Bavinck is up to.

The space between pantheism and rationalism is a description of God as absolute personal being. “Absolute being, who alone has being in himself,” says Bavinck, is the best description of God and preferable above “personality, love, fatherhood and so forth, because it encompasses all of God’s attributes in an absolute sense.” Such a statement affirms God is perfect in wisdom, knowledge, holiness, love, and justice. According to pantheism, God loses distinction between himself and the cosmos. In rationalism God is often reduced to the ‘Y’ carried over in an equation. Neo-platonists sometimes switch between the masculine and neuter pronoun for God because he is a variable without definite character. If scripture is true, says Bavinck, Christian theology can discuss God’s being and attributes with certainty. The enormous problems and questions Bavinck raises here on knowing God is the stuff of personal growth. Next time we will explore Bavinck’s analysis on the Scripture names for God and their interpretation within and without Christian dogmatics.

Perhaps there is no better place to discuss prevailing prayer than from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Fenner’s treatment of Lam. 3:57 does not gloss a ho-hum exhortation to prayer. If anything, Fenner strips the varnish off his message with a brief historical introduction of the text followed by three key points leading to the doctrine. “This book of Lamentations,” writes Fenner, “doeth plainely shew what miseries and distresses sin is the cause of” within the context of the Babylonian captivity. Fenner suggests that years of national prayer were counted as one (in the day that I called) and that God heard all their prayers (Thou drewest neare in the day). Delitzsch notes this verse, found in Ps. 145:18, is uttered as the experience of all believers. Reyburn and Fry confirm the reading as the verb (qariba) demonstrates a movement closing in the space from the speaker’s perspective. All of which lends itself the doctrine Fenner is handling: that an effectual prayer is an insatiable prayer:

“This is the first and prime thing that the soule looks after, it being the very end of prayer to be heard; it is not with prayer as with Oratory; for in Oratory; a man may use all the perswasive arguments that the wit of man can invent, and speak as cuttingly, and as perswasively as may be, and yet the heart may be so intractable as not to be perswaded; it is not so with prayer … The end of prayer is to prevaile with God … A man that never gotten the end of his prayers, till he hath gotten that he prayed for.” (Fenner, 1657, 266)

No sin so devlish, no sin so rooted, no country, writes Fenner, so devastated that the godly soul does not press God for a reply.

In a sermon on Hebrews 11:5 Thomas Manton (1620-1677) makes a one-to-one correspondence with Enoch’s translation and Christ’s ascension. “In Adam God would give the world a pledge of the fruit of sin, which is death; and in Enoch God would give a pledge of the fruit of holiness; and that is immortality and eternal life.” The proof is Christ’s taking human nature to heaven in the ascension, and leaving us with His Spirit in pledge of the promise (John 8:51). The interpretive question here is: can Manton read his NT doctrine of the ascension onto the OT texts, Gen. 5:24 and Dan. 7:13?

To prove that heaven will perfect human nature and communion with God Manton cites Dan. 7:13: “One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him.” Aben Ezra and many rabbinic interpreters take ‘son of man’ to be Israel. But others, both Jewish and Christian alike, take the phrase to represent the Messiah based on extensive OT and NT references, and R. Ezra’s supporting text (vs. 27 cf. 24) is not compelling.  On the other hand it can refer to a ‘congregation’ of human-like figures opposed to the animal-like figures used elsewhere in the apocalyptic text.

Manton’s reading of Dan. 7:13 is striking and unique. With the reference to the Messiah on one hand and the congregation of the faithful on the other, Manton organizes a cluster of NT texts around Dan. 7:13 to cement the ascension of Christ as fact and promise to the believer’s transmission to heaven.

“As soon as the soul departs out of the body you shall be carried by the angels in triumph to Christ. Believer’s have the same entertainment which Christ had. Christ was welcomed to heaven with acclamations (Dan. 7:13). He was ‘brought’ that is, by a train of angels, and there conducted and welcomed [him] to heaven with a Well done, and well suffered for the souls of men! So shall your souls be carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom, Luke 16:22. Why into Abraham’s bosom? Christ himself was not yet ascended … but you shall be carried into Christ’s bosom. Look, as God did as it were take Christ by the hand when he ascended, therefore it is said, Acts 2:33, ‘Being by the right hand of God exalted.’ It principally notes the power of the divine majesty: but it is an allusion to the entertainment we give to a friend or guest we would welcome … so will Christ entertain you.”

Karl Barth said that “back to,” is not a good slogan for dogmatics. All science must move forward. Problem is how to do it in a positive climate that rejects all metaphysical investigation. The rationalism in favor of innate ideas confuses the light of reason with revelation. We have potential to grow in knowledge (all of which is mediate) but the concepts themselves are not innate. Granted, argues Bavinck, things are grasped because they are apprehended only in God (Malebranche) and in the soul by recollection (Plato). Natural theology cannot equal ‘revealed’ religion (illumination/inspiration) because it’s a reflection of the work of God in creation: if it’s natural it cannot be the product of human reason. In that limited sense the world does not take us away from God but leads us to him.

Bavinck’s analysis is dense but his ability to navigate wildly competitive views of is profound. If God’s incomprehensibility without the Church leans towards pantheism; within the Church an overemphasis on contemplation assumes the highest value as authentic religious experience. For Bavinck the priority on the inner life leads to mysticism and withdrawal from the world. Yet when Christians perform theology they are rooted firmly in the understanding that God’s essence is unknowable and that all figures of speech borrowed from experience speaks to higher things (John of Damascus). Next week Bavinck begins his investigation into the names of God.

Theology since scholasticism lost the impact of God’s incomprehensibility. Philosophy took it up especially in the thinking of Kant and Hegel. For Kant, God’s being is lost in the critique of pure reason because, “the soul, the world, and God cannot be objectively demonstrated.” Attributing intellect and will to God is “practical knowledge” but adds nothing to the volume of human science. Hegel attempted to strip the concept of God from all sense-related forms but ran aground in the claim that, “a sense-related representation could never be overcome in the idea of God and therefore (Hegel) ended up in atheism.” Atheism usually retreats to agnosticism, says Bavinck, because Hegel reasoned that “our God-consciousness is nothing other than God’s self-consciousness. God exists to the extent that he is known by us.” Man, the measure of all things infinite. So what’s the solution?

Bavinck suggests that negative predicates (“God is unknowable, beyond comprehension, etc.) carry real weight but they “prove too much.” The world is, after all, knowable and positive predicates of God’s character and personality are grounded in revelation. Can Christians ascribe to God a personality and maintain that he is absolute? Bavinck says yes, “Our knowledge does not limit God because 1. It is grounded in him, 2. Can only exist through him,” and if absoluteness of God’s being (according to pantheism/rationalism) precludes all limitation, “it is equally wrong (for rationalism) to call him absolute, unity, good, and essential being.” God’s self-consciousness is as deep and rich as his being, meaning that his self-consciousness is not dependent on non-being or the competent grasp of finite beings to maintain existence. Mystery is not the same as ‘self-contradiction.’

The trick here is to illustrate what Bavinck is saying without using an unhelpful analogy. Suppose that agnosticism is saying, ‘Look. You theologians are giving God a personality which you can’t do anymore than you can give a personality to gravity or math.’ But [Reformed] theology is not ascribing personality to God in the same way personality is applied socially to other humans. We are not looking at God’s personality the same way we look at and admire a good actor who’s played the hero, the villain, and the comic relief. It’s like saying God has to be famous to exist. But this would mean God’s celebrity has to fit the mold of celebrity culture which drags God down to the level of finite being. The tension here between faith and rationalism is very important because it’s about redirecting the love of the creature to the love of God. Next week Bavinck tackles the problem of innate ideas and the faint notions of greater things.

The greatest dangers to theology are words and a devaluation of mystery. If theology becomes an exercise of rhetoric or replaces its objective vision (revelation) for the subjective impression (positivism) theology degenerates into anthropology (Fichte). The evolutionary theory in Bavinck’s day, for example, held that YHWH was a Hittite mountain God adopted by the Hebrews and localized on Mt. Sinai. But God is represented as the Creator (Gen. 2:4b) and “descends” from heaven at the scene of Babel (Gen. 11:5, 7) and “accompanies” Abraham and Jacob on their journeys. Point is, concludes Bavinck, that Old Testament revelation is preparatory, external in nature, “it does indeed furnish true and reliable knowledge of God, but not a knowledge that exhaustively corresponds to his being.” Signs of his presence are darkness (Ex. 20:21; Deut. 4:11; 5:22; 1 Kg. 8:12; 2 Chron. 6:1) possibly to show that natural light does not represent his brilliance.

Who is lost in the cloud of unknowing? From Plotinus to Erigena negative expressions of God’s being are more accurate though less satisfying. Scholasticism expressed God’s attributes in great detail but lost incomprehensibility in the shuffle. The Lutheran and Reformed, says Bavinck, lost sight of the significance of the doctrine yet the Remonstrant/Socinian wing did much worse, “Eternal life, they maintained [Rationalism/Socinianism] does not consist of knowing God but in doing his will.” Who God is becomes unimportant.

Next week we will look at Bavinck’s analysis of God’s incomprehensibility in the shift from theology to philosophy.

The tensions between modern life’s this-world scientific orientation and the pietistic other-worldly contemplation was a concern Bavinck was a pains to address. These two worldviews have inherent dangers to genuine faith; the former slips easily into asceticism and solitude while the other degenerates into, “cold Pelagianism and unfeeling moralism.” These issues, warns Bavinck, directly affect worship and the quality of religious life for those around us.

Bavinck writes with the conviction that God has certainly spoken and revealed himself to the creation from within and without. This is no mere academic exercise: God’s revelation is personal, inviting faith and communion with him through Christ and the Spirit. Our series continues with Bavinck’s view of God’s incomprehensibility right here, next week.

So if we get ten positive responses from those interested in more Herman Bavinck we will bring back the series. Please post “yes” to the comment field on this post between now and Friday for continued articles on Bavinck’s Doctrine of God (vol. 2). Cheers

Ecclesiastes 11:5 contrasts two kinds of knowledge: natural phenomena and the knowledge of God. Ancient Israel did not have pediatric science or the technology to predict the weather forecast for a whole week as enjoyed today. The point is not the difference between scientific progress and religious faith. The point Ecclesiastes 11:5 is making is something like, “the more we learn the less we know.” This is especially true when it comes to knowing God. Writing in a post-Hamlet climate Trapp places the progress of his age on par with Qoheleth’s: what a work is man! The microcosm of life in the body is, “and abridgment of the visible world, as the soul is of the invisible.”

Like most Puritans, Trapp was not caught in the headlights of uncertainty. The mystery of life presented in the text does not stop at unknowing but acknowledges trust in God as the antithesis to the works of God’s providence:

“Do thou that which God commandeth, and let things fall out as they will, there is an overruling hand in all for the good of those that love God (Prov. 3:5; Isa. 58:7). The Apostle (2 Cor. 8:2) useth a word for liberality, which properly signifieth simplicity; and this he doth in opposition to that crafty and witty wiliness of the covetous, to defend themselves from the danger, as they take it, of liberality (generously*).”

* Sincerely is likely the meaning of aplotes. See Kittel’s TDNT for a defense of generously.

Ecclesiastes 11:6 has a peculiar phrase not found elsewhere in the OT: “This or that” (hazeh ʾow-zeh). The labor of sowing seed as a literal representation of agricultural life or figurative of procreation does not contain certainty. We can’t know, says Qoheleth, the intimate details of the work of God, (i.e. we can’t predict the success or failure of our work.) The knowing or not knowing the outcome of one’s industry  in ‘this or that’ is here compared to God’s knowledge. The human perspective is drastically limited: one act or another may succeed, or perhaps both will. There’s reason to diversify.

For Trapp the solution to life’s uncertainty is simple. “At all times be prepared for every good work (Tit. 3:1) … sow mercy in the morning, so it likewise in the evening, as those bountiful Macedonians did, to the shame of those richer but harder Corinthians (2 Co. 8:3; Phil. 4:16).” Nothing is more certain, says Trapp, than the fruits of love’s labor. The advance of blessedness is accompanied by God’s superintendence (Heb. 6:10) even if only one leper in ten returns the favor.