If I were ever to teach a systematic theology class, I would
use
Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck to do it. A condensation of
his massive, four-part
Reformed Dogmatics,
Our Reasonable Faith
is a fantastic introduction to theology.
Summary
Opening the book with the simple statement, “God, and God
alone, is man’s highest good,” Bavinck devotes the first eight chapters of his
book to the knowledge of God. How does man come to know God? In what does that
knowledge consist? He begins by talking about the nature and value of general
revelation. I particularly appreciated his emphasis here, as many Reformed
Christians today push the idea of antithesis so far that there is no value in
general revelation whatever. As someone who teaches things like Homer,
Euripides, Plato and Aristotle at a Christian school, I sometimes like to ask
my students why we want to read all these pagan writers. The duly trained and
dutiful Van Tillians among them respond with, “So we can show what’s wrong with
them.” However, I believe, and Bavinck would agree, that there are beauties and
truths to be found in the writings of the pagans that cannot be found elsewhere
and are due to the common grace of general revelation, an idea which I think is
needed as a corrective for a misapplied or excessive view of antithesis.
After discussing general revelation, Bavinck spends several
chapters detailing the nature and value of special revelation culminating in
Holy Scripture. He does a good job balancing the two forms of God’s revelation
of Himself, and in fact if I had to pick one thing about this book that I liked
so much it would be its balance in all things. Concerning the two forms of
revelation, he writes, “When we have our attention fixed upon the richness of
the grace which God has given in His special revelation, we sometimes become so
enamored of it that the general revelation loses its whole significance and
worth for us. And when, at another time, we reflect on the good, and true, and
beautiful that is to be found by virtue of God’s general revelation in nature
and in the human world, then it can happen that the special grace, manifested
to us in the person and work of Christ, loses its glory and appeal for the eye
of our soul.”
From this point, he moves on to what we might call “theology
proper,” the being of God and the divine Trinity. He continues quite
naturally to the doctrine of creation and God's divine providence over His creation.
This leads in to a chapter on the creation of man, and man’s essence and
purpose. He then deals with sin and death, and what they mean for mankind. He
then discusses the covenant of grace that God made with mankind for the
redemption of the world.
The latter half of the book proceeds from this point to
detail how the salvation of the world is implemented and applied. He spends a
few chapters on the person of Christ and his work. He moves on to the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit brings us to share in the person of
Christ. Finally, he talks about the people who share in the salvation which
Christ has achieved, the new humanity, the Church. The book ends with a chapter
on eternal life and the future of the world.
Evaluation
There were several things about this particular book that
made it stand out as a good introduction to Christian theology. First of all, a
book like this could easily be dry and academic. In Bavinck’s hands, it is
anything but. In many places he demonstrates a poetic deftness in his prose
that makes the book a joy to read. This is especially welcome as academic theologians
are not necessarily known as brilliant stylists; try picking up a theological
journal or modern academic commentary sometime. But above and beyond this is
the fact that this book is devotional. Very early in the book Bavinck writes
that, for ancient Israelites, “God was for them not at all a cold concept,
which they then proceeded rationally to analyze, but He was a living, personal
force, a reality infinitely more real than the world around them.” He goes on
to emphasize this again and again throughout his book. “To profess theology is
holy work,” he says. “And a theologian, a true theologian is one who speaks out
of God, through God, about God, and does this always to the glorification of
His name.” This fact, that the whole point of the theological endeavor is
worship rather than to gain “an abstract concept of God, such as the
philosopher gives us.”
Next this book is erudite but accessible. As Bavinck wrote
his Reformed Dogmatics first, he had a huge amount of scholarship behind
this shorter book. However, he manages to hit on science, philosophy, various
strains of theology in the Christian world, and history in ways that, without dumbing
down the content, are accessible to readers with no background in these areas
of study. That is a pretty impressive feat. It struck me again and again
reading this book that Bavinck was a very well-informed man. He wasn’t the sort
of theology wonk who only reads theology books. He also wrote books on
psychology, politics, science, women’s rights, family life, and a number of other
subjects. Finally, throughout the book he is interacting with viewpoints other
than his own. As a Reformed theologian that means that he is regularly speaking
to Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, explaining the
sometimes fine nuances in their theological differences while defending his own
view. This is particularly a joy for me because, unlike many Reformed writers, he
is not polemical in his tone and charitably tries to state every position
fairly. I found it fascinating, for instance, to see the traditional
differences between Reformed, Catholic, and Lutheran theologians about the
image of God and how it affects other parts of theology.
Finally, the book is supremely Biblical. Everything Bavinck teaches is copiously footnoted with Scripture for further reading and support. I
understand that in writing Our Reasonable Faith, he did this on purpose.
He cut down on the academic footnotes in Reformed Dogmatics and
supplemented with Scripture proofs, once again to make it accessible for the
average reader. Consequently this is not a book that will be used for frequent
reference purposes. For that you may want to get something more traditionally
and rigidly organized with a huge index like Millard Erickson’s Christian
Theology. However, as an introduction to theology and a Christian
worldview, I have never read a book as perfectly suited to the task as Our
Reasonable Faith. It was fully worth all the time I took to read it,
highlight it, mark in it, and copy out passages from it.
5 out of 5 stars
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