Bavinck and Reformed Theology
Like John Calvin, Herman Bavinck is one of the greatest theologians who has ever lived. And just as some scholars like to re-write history and assert things about Calvin that aren’t true, so it is with unintentionally and sometimes intentionally misinterpreting Herman Bavinck. Granted, Calvin was much more influential in terms of church history than Herman Bavinck, but Bavinck is no less competent a theologian, and his theology is no less accurate compared to the teachings of Scripture than Calvin’s. Both set a high standard for the church of all ages. As such, both serve as authoritative figures – fallible, but authoritative figures nonetheless – for the church. What they really believed and stood for, then, matters. Perhaps we should be reminded that “he who controls the past, controls the future.”
Bavinck’s 4-volume Reformed Dogmatics has just been recently translated into English (2008), which means his influence in the English-speaking world – especially in Reformed circles – is beginning to grow by leaps and bounds. Still, the elephant in the room that today’s so-called “Neo-Calvinists,” Neo-liberals, and pseudo-Reformed thinkers do not want to address is that Bavinck – like Calvin and Kuyper before him – held to the doctrine of inerrancy. Bavinck nowhere asserts that Scripture contains errors – at least, in the sense suggested by the adherents of the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy.
A full argument for this position (which is the position of this blog post) can be found in Richard Gaffin Jr.’s book God’s Word in Servant Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck on the Doctrine of Scripture (2008). DA Carson appropriately wrote on the back cover of this concise (and highly recommended) volume, “…urgently needed to respond to a resurgence of historical nonsense.” Some of this nonsense will be dealt with in upcoming blog articles, particularly in regards to the assertions of A.T.B. McGowan and Daniel Harlow. Until then, what did Bavinck really believe about biblical inerrancy?
Accommodate This
Bavinck closely parallels with Calvin’s view of accommodation when he says:
[Scripture] speaks of ‘land approaching,’ of the sun ‘rising’ and ‘standing still,’ of blood as the ‘soul’ of an animal, of the kidneys as the seat of sensations, of the heart as the source of thoughts, etc. and is not the least bit worried about the scientifically exact language of astronomy, physiology, psychology, etc…Holy Scripture uses the language of everyday experience, which is and remains always true. (Reformed Dogmatics, Prolegomena, 446)
Bavinck is also just as bold as Calvin in admitting the flexible nature of Scripture’s writing and assertions:
Considered from the viewpoint and by the standards of secular history, Scripture is often incomplete, full of gaps and certainly not written by the rules of contemporary historical criticism. From this it surely does not follow that the historiography of Scripture is untrue and unreliable. Just as a person with common sense can put up a good logical argument without ever having studied logic, so a reporter can very well offer a true account of what has happened without having first studied the rules of historical criticism. (Reformed Dogmatics, Prolegomena, 446)
Standards of truth must be defined by the context of genre, purpose, and authorial intent. He says,
For when the prophets and apostles speak in the context of nature about the ‘sun rising’ and the ‘land approaching,’ etc., they cannot give us a false impression since they are dealing with phenomena that we still see every day and about which we can speak in the same way they do. But if in the area of history they write ‘in accordance with appearance,’ that certainly has to mean not in accordance with what happened objectively but in accordance with what many in their day believed subjectively. In that case they give us a false impression and are therefore being compromised in their authority and reliability. If theologians were to apply this principle consistently, then not only the early chapters of Genesis could be dissolved into myths and legends – as is already happening at the hands of many Roman Catholic theologians today – but the entire history of Israel and original Christianity. If Scripture obviously intends to present a story as historical, the exegete has no right, at the discretion of historical criticism, to turn it into a myth. (446)
Thus,
Scripture does not satisfy the demand for exact knowledge in the way we demand it in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, etc. This is a standard that may not be applied to it. (144)
This sounds a lot like RC Sproul, who wrote in the official exposition of the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy:
Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed. (emphasis mine. See Sproul’s Can I Trust the Bible? (Orlando: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), xxvi)
Scriptures Preserved “from error”
Bavinck wrote a summary for each of his chapters in the Reformed Dogmatics. He is, without a doubt, extra careful in these concise statements about what words to use and what words not to use when presenting his case. In his carefully crafted summary of the doctrine of inspiration, Bavinck says,
Inspiration should not be reduced to mere preservation from error, nor should it be taken in a ‘dynamic’ way as the inspiration of persons. (388)
Notice, Bavinck does not do away with inerrancy as is so often suggested. Bavinck simply points out that the doctrine of inspiration is more than the doctrine of inerrancy, and he’s absolutely right. There are several doctrines underneath the teaching of inspiration (or what Bavinck calls, “the dogmas of the infallibility of Holy Scripture,” 204). Bavinck is probably addressing his friends at Princeton (i.e. Warfield) who are known for their rigorous defense of Scriptural inerrancy. Warfield, after all, delivered one of the most thorough expositions and defenses of inspiration and Scriptural infallibility in church history. This partly explains why “Bavinck has little to say about the issue of error in relation to Scripture or its infallibility, at least in his development of the doctrine of inspiration,” (God’s Word in Servant Form, 81). One of his best friends was already doing the job, and Bavinck was more concerned about a united, “organic” whole than a doctrine of inspiration strictly designed for immediate apologetic value. Regardless if Bavinck is correcting an imbalance of the American Princetonians, he is assuming – not denying – the inerrancy of Scripture. In fact, Professor of Church History of Georg-August University in Göttingen Germany said, “Dutch insights have certainly greatly enriched the Princeton/Westminster understanding of inerrancy, though they are not antithetical to it,” (Claire Davis, “Inerrancy and Westminster Calvinism,” in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic, Harvie M. Conn, ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 41).
All of this is consistent with Bavinck’s incarnational view of Scripture. Christ is fully human and fully divine, and yet, Christ remained sinless and without error. So, Scripture is fully human but without error. He says,
For divine revelation to fully enter the life of humankind, it assumed the servant form of written language. In this sense Scripture too is an incarnation of God, the product of God’s incarnation in Christ.
Error, lies, darkness of intellect are all constituents of sin; hence the revelation of salvation ought not to consist only in a communication of life but also in the announcement of truth.
Just as Christ’s human nature, however weak and lowly, remained free from sin, so also Scripture is “conceived without defect or stain”; totally human in all its parts but also divine in all its parts… (Prolegomena, 345, 435, 354)
Bavinck makes a direct contrast between truth and error when talking about the inspiration of Scripture. Like Calvin (who he quoted in the above citation) and Kuyper, he asserts that if Scripture is God’s Word, then it is wholly truthful, and if it is wholly truthful, then it does not err. Why? Because “error” is a “constituent of sin,” and since Scripture is incarnational in the sense that it is both fully human and fully divine, the Bible does not contain errors.
This is why it is nonsensical for critics (i.e. McGowan) to assert that “The Bible doesn’t teach it’s own inerrancy, therefore we shouldn’t believe it.” The Bible does teach it’s own truthfulness (see Grudem’s work), which requires inerrancy. Falsehood does not exist where there is only truth. In that sense, the Bible does, in fact, teach it’s own inerrancy.
What Do You Mean “Error”?
Of course, we have to ask what Bavinck understood to be “error.” That is, after all, the million dollar question in this debate; “if the Bible does not err, what is an ‘error’?”
It’s interesting that Bavinck says Jesus “is also without error, falsehood or deception intellectually,” (398). Richard Gaffin Jr. points out that,
Bavinck…appears to hold that the error at issue in biblical infallibility is not limited to deception and the intent to deceive. Biblical infallibility, and the kind of error excluded by it, is not only ethical but also intellectual in nature…Bavinck’s view is that all error, not just deception, is the result of sin. (Gaffin, 62)
This is consistent with Kuyper (Bavinck’s predecessor as the chair of theology at Free University), who said “forgetting, lying and unintentional falsifying corrupt all oral tradition,” (Dictaten Dogmatiek, 2.183). Kuyper said this in direct contrast to the written tradition of Scripture, meaning that the Scriptures are not subject to errors of any kind, whether unintentional forgetfulness or intentional lying.
OK. But, what about the subject matter of inerrancy? Does inerrancy in Bavinck’s view extend “in all matters upon which it touches” as Article IX of the Chicago Statement says?
Evidently. Bavinck asserts that the work of the Holy Spirit in Scripture extends to facts as much as to theology, saying “this divinity is not just an attribute of a few religious or moral pronouncements but equally of facts and deeds,” (594-595). For that reason Bavinck can say, “It is therefore an error to describe the nature of scriptural authority as ‘moral’,” (461). Of course, critics then like to point out how Bavinck stresses the overall purpose of Scripture, which is not to inform about geography, history, astronomy, etc.:
The Bible is not given to us as a text for scientific investigation of creation, but it does provide the principles for knowing and living that guide us all. (389)
Of course. No one who believes in inerrancy disagrees with this assertion. But the primary purpose of Scripture – no matter what it is – in no way undermines the truthfulness of all of Scripture in whatever Scriptures addresses. Bavinck, as should all Christians, believes that the Bible is fully truthful, inerrant, and authoritative in all matters that the biblical authors wrote, facts as much as theology, history as much as morality – granted of course, the context of particular portions of Scripture are making assertions about those particular subjects. History gets treated like history, poetry like poetry, parables like parables, etc. – all while the Scripture remains truthful and therefore inerrant.
But!
But, what about when Bavinck says:
In the final analysis it is God Himself who, often by way of human error, maintains His Word and causes His thoughts to triumph over the wisdom of the world. – Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 115
At first sight, this seems like Bavinck flat out denies inerrancy. But, when we realize the context (which our podcast series is highlighting), Bavinck isn’t denying inerrancy at all. Here’s the full context:
And even though it is true that every exegete has his private slant, and that much of the interpretation has been biased, nevertheless the history of the interpretation of Scripture points to remarkable progress, a progress to which each century has contributed its share. In the final analysis it is God Himself who, often by way of human error, maintains His Word and causes His thoughts to triumph over the wisdom of the world. - Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 115
Bavinck isn’t even talking about His written Word, let alone the doctrine of inspiration, let alone the doctrine of inerrancy; he’s talking about theological interpretation in church history.
But, what about when scholars like McGowan say:
Above all, the organic view takes seriously the work of the human authors of Scripture in a way that inerrantists often fail to do. Aspects of Scripture that the inerrantists ‘explain away’ pose no problem for Bavinck. He goes so far as to say that ‘the guidance of the Holy Spirit promised to the church does not exclude the possibility of human error’. Such a claim could never be made by any inerrantist. – McGowan, The Divine Authenticity of Scripture, 158.
This, again, is an incredibly gross misrepresentation of what Bavinck is saying. McGowan couldn’t be more radically removed from the actual context of what he’s citing. Here’s the full context of Bavinck:
The dogma that the church confesses and the dogmatician develops is not identical with the absolute truth of God itself. Not even the Roman Catholic Church dares to make that claim. For though it confesses the infallibility of the pope, it makes an essential distinction between papal infallibility and apostolic inspiration; it stands by the matters themselves but not the exact words and therefore does not literally elevate dogma to the level of the Word of God. In Catholic theology there is thus room left for the question of how far the truth of God has found fully adequate expression in the church’s dogma. On the basis of Protestant assumptions, however, this is much more the case, for here the guidance of the Holy Spirit promised to the church does not exclude the possibility of human error. – Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 32
Inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility – virtually nothing having to do with the doctrine of Scripture is addressed in this quote of Bavinck. He’s talking about how the Holy Spirit guides the church, which isn’t infallible. That is, when I preach on Sunday morning on Paul’s teaching in Romans 11, I’m not infallible. I can make a mistake. The church, as a whole (and especially as an institution), can also make a mistake – just like they did throughout so much of Medieval and pre-Reformation church history. God promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the church, but that doesn’t mean the church doesn’t make mistakes. That’s Bavinck’s point.
What does that have to do with Scripture containing errors? Bavinck’s denial of inerrancy? The generic doctrine of Scripture?
Nothing. It is simply beyond me to understand how this is considered the cream of the crop from today’s “scholars,” “academic elites,” and “intellectuals” – let alone from the Reformed tradition! That isn’t to say McGowan, a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, doesn’t have some good things to say in this volume. His outline of fundamentalism and categorizations of various views can be rather helpful, especially for those who are looking for something non-exhaustive. But why such a scar in quoting someone out of context – especially on a claim that – as we have seen – is so dubious? More on this book later.
Conclusion to Series on Calvin, Kuyper, Bavinck, and Inerrancy
I’ve demonstrated that the doctrine of inerrancy, as outlined by the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, was not foreign, but part and parcel of John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Bavinck’s theology. These three greats are fabulous theological examples for all Christians to follow. And while our belief in Scripture’s truthfulness does not depend upon the sound argument of any particular theologian – or any argument at all – we are indebted to the labors of these men, and expected by God to take heed to the instruction contained in Scripture, and to the truth about Scripture itself. For how we think of Scripture determines how we read Scripture. Inerrancy, then, is central to the Christian faith and a historical part of Reformed Theology.
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