Quotes from Herman Bavinck

Revelation always supposes that man is able to receive impressions or thoughts or inclinations from another than this phenomenal world, and in a way other than that usually employed.

By banishing metaphysics, materialism has no longer an ethical system, knows no longer the distinction between good and evil, possesses no moral law, no duty, no virtue, and no highest good.

The church's holiness must not be sacrificed for its catholicity, and the church's catholicity may not be surrendered in favor of its holiness. For in denying either, we lose both. Both attributes by nature characterize the one Christian church.

Whoever intentionally robs himself of self-consciousness, reason, and will, extinguishes the light which God has given to man, annihilates his human freedom and independence, and degrades himself to an instrument for an alien and unknown power.

Metaphysics, the belief in the absolute as a holy power, always forms the foundation of ethics.

Darwin was led to his agnostic naturalism as much by the misery which he observed in the world as by the facts which scientific investigation brought under his notice. There was too much strife and injustice in the world for him to believe in providence and a predetermined goal. A world so full of cruelty and pain he could not reconcile with the omniscience, the omnipotence, the goodness of God.

The whole man is taken into fellowship with that one true God; not only his feelings, but also his mind and will, his heart and all his affections, his soul and his body.

The plan of salvation in the Christian religion determines the method of Christian theology.

If there ever is to be a blessed humanity it must be preceded by a radical change in human nature.

The peculiarity of the Christian religion as has been so often shown and acknowledged even by opponents, lies in the person of Christ.

From the start of its labors dogmatic theology is shrouded in mystery; it stands before God the incomprehensible One.

Christianity is no mere revelation of God in the past, but it is, in connection with the past, a work in the midst of this and every time. All other religions try to obtain salvation by the works of men, but Christianity makes a strong protest against this; it is not autosoteric but heterosoteric; it does not preach self-redemption, but glories in redemption by Christ alone. Man does not save himself, and does not save God, but God alone saves man, the whole man, man for eternity.