Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics
From the Forum Magazine, Spring 2016 - view the full issue here
Today we regularly hear the claim that the church must become missional. This is often accompanied by calls for a new missional theology because, so it is said, older theologies are tied to Christendom, to defending what is already in place rather than sending us out. From that perspective, a work of systematic theology like Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, now more than one hundred years old, might not seem to qualify as missional. In this article I dispute this presumption and argue that the Reformed Dogmatics is still a valuable missional work.
First, what does it mean for a theology to be missional? We may not start out with a pre-set idea of what a missional theology should look like and ask whether or not Bavinck f its it. The first question we need to ask about any work of theology is: “Is it true?” Does the way it talks about God actually comport with who God really is? Theologies that look very different from each other because they are addressed to different audiences with distinct needs can all be true to biblical teaching. When we compare John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (16th century, Geneva) with Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology (1871–72, USA) and Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (1st ed. 1895–1901, The Netherlands) we see three Reformed works of theology with much similar content yet distinct forms.
Once we agree on the truth question we can then ask about a theology’s missional character. A true theology could nonetheless be said to be not very missional if it did not intentionally promote the church’s mission. Conversely, another work could be very intentionally missional but not entirely in harmony with biblical teaching. I am convinced that today a good systematic theology must be missional; our historical context requires this. Hence the following definition:
A missional theology understands the task of systematic theology to consist of providing comprehensive and contemporary summaries of the Christian truth about God with a view toward assisting the church in effectively fulfilling the Great Commission in our day.
It is with that definition in mind that I judge Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics to be a profoundly missional theology.
Bridging cultural divides is one of the greatest challenges missionaries face in communicating the gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ to people who are not at all familiar with the imagery of the biblical world. At a very elementary level, missionaries wonder whether “the Lord is my shepherd” is a meaningful statement to native people who live in Arctic regions, the barrios of Mexico City, or the favelas of São Paulo, or to others who have never seen sheep and do not know what a shepherd is. Conceptually, it is also a challenge to defend the notion that God is a King to modern people who are constitutionally wired for democracy, equality, and personal autonomy. And how does one proclaim the “good news” of eternal life to people whose worldview includes notions of ongoing cycles of reincarnation that feel like an oppressive burden? Wouldn’t “good news” be a doctrine in which we are set free from eternal life?
Missionaries need to have in-depth and, as much as is possible, existential awareness of the deepest longings and aspirations of those to whom they bring the gospel. A simple biblical theology that summarizes the “truth” of Scripture in its own terms and language (covenant; kingdom of God; justification, etc.) is inadequate for this mission task. Unless missionaries know how their message will be received they risk being misunderstood and undermining the gospel itself. A classic example of such misunderstanding has been chronicled by Canadian missionary Don Richardson who worked among the tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. When he tried to explain the meaning of Christ’s atoning sacrifice at Calvary to the Sawi people, he found that, as a people that valued cunning and deceit, they considered Judas the real hero of the story. Speaking the good news of the gospel into such a worldview presented a real challenge. Richardson found a way in through witnessing an unexpected ceremony. The Sawi people were in a perpetual state of war and effected a peace treaty with their enemies through a “peace child ceremony” in which each village presented the enemy with an infant as a “peace child.” As long as the child lived the village would live at peace. Richardson had found his breakthrough and used the peace child as an analogy for God’s redemptive love in Christ.
Theologically, what is going on here? Reformed theology teaches that God is already present to all people, revealing himself to them; therefore, their religions, their myths and legends, and their ritual practices, are a response to this general revelation. If people are to understand the gospel, the special revelation of God’s saving work in Israel and definitively in Jesus Christ, gospel truth (or Christian doctrine) must be connected to what people already know and believe about God and the world. A good missional theology must relate the knowledge of God that is given in Scripture to the rest of our knowledge. It must relate biblical truth to universal human experience.
This is exactly what Bavinck does, starting with his understanding of the Bible itself. He reminds us that Israel’s religious practices — including covenant, circumcision, sacrifices, and the priesthood — have much in common with those of her neighbors. Why? Because God is present to all people; as God’s image bearers living in God’s creation they cannot avoid or evade responding to God. Biblical revelation does not drop out of the sky; God comes to Abraham, to Moses, to post-exilic Jews in the days of Caesar Augustus and Quirinius, to the Greeks and to barbarians, to Frisians and to native peoples everywhere, and calls them to himself in language they can understand.
All people, therefore, must respond to God. The natural response, according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, is to suppress this general revelation and exchange it for an idol. But even idolatrous responses teach us something about God and human longing. The religious traditions of the world show that they have some understanding of God’s power, an awareness that there is a norm by which they ought to live and that all people fail to meet, that we need a deliverer, and the like.
I consider Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics to be helpful for the missional task of communicating the gospel because he regularly introduces the main topics of theology by calling attention to these universal expressions of response to God’s general revelation. Consider the following example from his chapter on Christ’s exaltation:
The death of Christ, the end of his humiliation, was simultaneously the road to his exaltation. In all religions and philosophical systems, one encounters the idea, expressed more or less consciously, that death is the road to life. People saw this phenomenon in nature, where day follows night and an awakening in the spring occurs after a winter of hibernation or dormancy. (Reformed Dogmatics, III, 421)
Bavinck is not saying that Christ’s death and resurrection should be treated merely as a sign of new life just like the daffodils that come up in the spring. He is simply observing that as people wrestle with the boundary issues of their own life and death, they have religiously created myths of dying and rising that missionaries can tap into as entry points for the gospel. That is all they are: entry points, nothing more. But entry points are essential for all mission work and Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics provides both a theological frame of mind that is missional and plenty of examples to help the missionary.
Bavinck’s treatment of the fundamental Trinitarian doctrine of God is even more important than such entry points. This was reinforced for me recently at a seminar for Chinese pastors and church leaders on the role of Christianity in helping create a flourishing society in China. Calvin Seminary students Jin Li and Mary Ma, who are translating Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics into Mandarin, asked me to prepare a paper for the conference on its possible relevance for Chinese society, particularly Christian engagement with government. Here, in brief, is what I said. I pointed out that for Bavinck all Christian thinking has to begin with the Trinity and that creation itself bears the marks of the Triune God. Furthermore, we can recognize these marks because “the Logos [Word] who became flesh is the same by whom all things were made,” and thus we who bear God’s likeness and image have the capacity to see them. Reality is an incarnation of God’s thought and is created by the same Logos who created the laws of thought in us. This leads to the important insight that “just as God is one in essence and distinct in persons, so also the work of creation is one and undivided, while in its unity it is still rich in diversity.” This Christian worldview, finally, is eminently translatable into the Chinese traditions of Heaven’s Mandate and Dao and provides Chinese Christians with a worldview that honors unity, respects plurality, and provides a perspective for how Christians relate to the state.
A missional theology must be true and helpful to the church in mission. Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics passes both tests.
(written by Dr. John Bolt, Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus)
