The Tulip Driven Life

Here it is. The final part. Now is the beginning of the end.  Before I begin this section proper, I would just like to quote Bavinck in a bit of context regarding his view of the Holy Spirit being the organ by which we receive external revelation (Scripture):  The Holy Spirit is the great and powerful witness to Christ, objectively in Scripture, subjectively in the very hearts of human beings. By that Spirit we receive a fitting organ for the reception of external revelation. God can be known only by God; the light can be seen only in his light. No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him [Matt. 11:27], and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit [1 Cor. 12:3]  Bavinck, H., Bolt, J., & Vriend, J. (2003). Reformed dogmatics: Prolegomena (Vol. 1, p. 506). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. I think for Bavinck the reason he ultimately appeals to a subjective source for the validity of Scripture de...

The Attributes of Scripture In what is our second to last post, we will cover two chapters:      A doctrine concerning Scripture’s attributes developed in the Reformation churches as a counter to Roman Catholicism on the one hand and Anabaptism on the other. The key issue was the nature and extent of scriptural authority. Rome honors church and tradition above Scripture, while Anabaptism respects the inner word at the expense of the external word of Scripture. In Roman Catholicism the precedence of the church over Scripture eventually led to the dogma of papal infallibility—Ubi papa, ibi ecclesia. Here, materially, Scripture is unnecessary. Over against this position, the Reformers posited their polemical doctrine of Scripture’s attributes: authority, necessity, sufficiency, and perspicuity. I mentioned in the last post how Rome came to a position of the church and tradition becoming the infallible interpreter of the infallible Word of God. Now papal infallibility...

Well, we are now approximately halfway through Prolegomena. I did not intend to do more than five or six posts, and now we are our tenth. I hope to finish this in twelve posts, at most thirteen. I have been reading this a few chapters at a time up to this point, but now I have finished Prolegomena. Bavinck is quite fond of repetitiveness, so I don't think chopping the length of the posts down and adding more chapters will be much of a problem. Special Revelation Here is the summary of this chapter:      Religion cannot survive on general revelation alone; a special divine disclosure or manifestation is needed. All religion can be reduced to three basic means. First, religious belief desires a God who is near so that in almost every religion there are holy places, holy times, and holy images. Second, in all religions one can find the belief that the gods in some way reveal their will to human beings. Finally, there is a universal belief in the special assistan...