Bavinck on Nature/Grace

Three cheers, and more, for John Bolt, who’s been working for several years to get Bavinck’s Dogmatics into English. He caps off his work with a one-volume abridgment ( Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume ).

Need a reason to choose Bavinck? Go no further than these criticisms of the nature/supernature scheme. Commenting specifically on the dogma issued at Vatican I, he writes “The sharpness of this contrast between natural and supernatural runs the grave risk of dualistically separating (supernatural) revelation from creation and nature. Special revelation should never be separated from its organic connection to history, the world, and humanity. Stated theologically, the religious antithesis should be between grace and sin and not between grace and nature.” On nature/grace premises, “What is distinctively Christian is . . . identified with and restricted to the ecclesiastical; for the world to be influenced in a Christian direction it needs to submit to the domination of the church. The nature/grace dualism also fuels the opposite of world dominaton . . . . Special revelation is not seen as entering into the fabric of the world and humanity but as floating outside and above it.”

And then this: “The Reformation revolted against this worldview . . . . The reality of the incarnation militates against any nature/grace dualism; the gospel is not hostile to the world as creation but to the world under the dominion of sin, the alien element that has insinuated itself into the world. Revelation and creation are not opposed to each other, for creation itself is a revelation . . . . The Reformation sought a Christianity that was hostile, not to nature but only to sin, and had a reforming and sanctifying effect upon natural life as a whole, including the world of culture, society, and politics. In the Reformation the adage came into its own: nature commends grace; grace emends nature.”