Quotes from Herman Bavinck

The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father's heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place.

God is above the world, and is also above sin and all evil. He allowed it because he could expiate it. So he maintained through all centuries and among all men the longing and the capacity for redemption, and wrought that redemption himself in the fulness of time, in the midst of history, in the crucified Christ.

The cross of Christ divides history into two parts — the preparation for and the accomplishment of reconciliation;

The highest ideal for the Christian is not to make peace with the world, with science, with culture at any price, but to keep himself from the evil one.

The task of dogmatics is precisely to rationally reproduce the content of revelation that relates to the knowledge of God.

The greatest thinkers of Greece — Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and later Plutarch and Plotinus — derived their ideas from ancient tradition, and further on from divine revelation.

Religion is inconceivable apart from revelation, and revelation cannot occur apart from the existence of a spiritual world above and behind this visible world, a spiritual world in communion with the visible world.

Where God's Word is, there is God Himself, there God's Spirit is at work, there God establishes His covenant, there He plants His church.

It is, moreover, of the greatest importance for every believer, particularly for the dogmatician, to know which Scriptural truths, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have been brought to universal recognition in the church of Christ. By this process, after all, the church is kept from immediately mistaking a private opinion for the truth of God.

Viewed properly, there is only one duty, that of love, which is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10). And there actually is only one object of that law- namely, God. Everything else- people, angels, nature, art, and so forth-may and must be only in God and for God. The sole end of all things, ourselves, our neighbors, the state, and the like- is God's glory. Pg. 101

Beneath the head lies the heart, out of which are the issues of life.

To separate between religion and metaphysics, however often it may have been attempted, is impossible.