One can only sit back in wonder when reading a statement like this:
It is on this basis that Bavinck can say: “There is thus a rich revelation of God even among the heathen—not only in nature but also in their heart and conscience, in their life and history, among their statesmen and artists, their philosophers and reformers.”
Artists can point to transcendence and thus their works can be appreciated to a point, but it is still the work of the lost that offers no hope. As a Christian I can find value in some of it but this is always limited at best. The same is true of philosophy as many thinkers have touched on certain truths or at the very least demonstrate how man's ability is limited. The history of states and civilisations is along the same lines. It's a story of reaching for the stars and yet falling short, of glory turned to dust. At best you find a kind of corrupted virtue that rots and turns ultimately to decadence and vice. The world's story is that of Babel, of failure. It should drive us not to want to glory in it or dream of fixing it (a pipe dream if ever there was one) but to turn away and look beyond. Fools like Bavinck think the Church won out in its contest with Imperial Rome. On the contrary, the Serpent/Dragon which inspired pagan Rome won by switching tactics and through cunning tricked the Church into worshipping the Beast and baptizing the evil legacy of the Caesars.
We labour here with determination to serve God's purposes but one looks in the vain in the New Testament (which interprets the Old) to find any notion that we are to look to the heathen as partners in some grand project to build the Kingdom. In fact I would argue this is the very sort of thing we're being warned against in the Old Testament but especially so in the New.
The life in the world is valid for Bavinck - sanctified. Building on the over-reaction of Martin Luther and the false doctrine of Vocation, Bavinck and Kuyper transform this doctrine into a full-blown philosophical model and consequently Scripture is left behind.
This paragraph is revealing:
Bavinck contrasts his view common grace with other Christian communions and movements. He rejects both a spirituality that directs humans to live some elevated life that ignores the here-and-now and forms of faith that reject the goodness of ordinary life (“Common Grace,” 44–55).
For example, Bavinck suggests that a number of Christian communions were influenced by anabaptism. Practically, this led, he claims, to "the rejection of art, scholarship, science, culture, and all the goods of earthly life, and the spurning of the vocation that rests upon us in family, business, and the state—all these are fruits not of healthy Reformation but of the unsound Anabaptist tradition" (“Common grace,” 54).
But this rejection does not balance God’s revelation of grace or intent for the world. Instead of dualisms between theology and philosophy or church and state, Bavinck argues for an organic unity between them (56, 57).
In
contrast to the New Testament which exhorts us to seek the things
that are above, to live as those who are citizens of the heavenly
Kingdom that is not of this world, to lay up our treasures there, to
not become entangled in the affairs of this life, to live as
strangers and pilgrims, to look at this present evil age as one that
is passing away, to treat are bodies as lowly even vile tents, to
view this life as one of cross-bearing, persecution, and perpetual
war - Bavinck celebrates this life and sanctifies the ordinary. Don't
live merely as pilgrims in Babylon. No, make money, build yourself a
comfortable house. Eat well, enjoy the good life. Feast. Wield power,
build your business, earn the world's accolades, and join hand in
hand with the culture, society, and the state - and thus by
implication take up its interests, its wealth and wars and the like.
Bavinck teaches worldliness and a rejection of Christ's Kingdom and
the values and imperatives our Lord taught about it.
What is
God's intent for the world? He makes this clear - under the curse of
death, it will perish in the fires of judgment. The Christian's hope
is in the New Heavens and New Earth - the Kingdom we now partake of
by means of our union with Christ and life in the Spirit.
The organic unity of Bavinck's Kingdom is syncretism, compromise, and it leads to idolatry. This is his poisoned legacy. The Anabaptists went wrong in many ways and yet when it comes to the Kingdom they retained the emphasis of the First Reformation in the face of the Neo-Christendom and re-cast Constantinianism of the Magisterial Reformation. The Kingdom theology of Bavinck and Kuyper is both a reaction to Enlightenment secularism and the Magisterial Reformation gone to seed.
We can agree that the Fall-generated dualisms of this present evil age will be removed at the eschaton, but Bavinck's thought represents an over-realized eschatology in the present. It manifests Triumphalism and a Theology of Glory as opposed to the call to bear the cross and live as pilgrims. It is a Judaizing tendency in that it seeks a kingdom of worldly glory akin to the false and hubris-ridden hope of the Pharisees, and like them is hostile to the preached Kingdom of Christ and the apostles. It sanctifies the world and thus promotes worldliness and the legacy of the Magisterial Reformation testifies to this in abundance. The history they would celebrate is in fact a legacy of shame and destructive anti-Christian conduct and outcomes.
There is nothing wrong with living an ordinary life and pursuing mundane tasks. We support our families and raise our children but these are merely means not ends. Our primary task and motivation is spiritual. Wiring a house is a valid task and a Christian can glorify God by doing honest good work and conducting himself in a godly way. But the wiring and house building are not worship - they do not contribute to the Kingdom and are not part of the eschatological realm. They will turn to dust in the wind. A Christian man can work to support his family but his real task on Earth is to worship God and this is not done by tying wires into panel but in fellowship, and a life around the Word, in the gathering of the Church, the studying of Scripture, prayer and the like. The call to serve in the Church is a higher calling but one that has throughout Church history been almost completely corrupted, and the Magisterial Reformation did precious little to correct this.
Where does the New Testament say the arts and sciences can be sanctified? This is speculation, a philosophical deduction rooted in questions generated by a larger framework divorced from Scripture. The adorning of the Old Testament Temple does not teach this. That was typology, a theological statement that applies to no art today. There is no sacred art - the very notion is a misnomer. All of these questions are motivated by cultural questions and concerns not found in the New Testament - ones resting on false and misguided inquiries and a desire to justify a place of status and respect in a holistic society that is not to be found this side of glory, and least of all for those who follow the lamb whithersoever he goeth.
The organic unity Bavinck promotes is a monism foreign to Scripture. The monistic order will only arrive with the eschaton. When it is imposed prior to it, it is to confuse the Church and the world, to decovenantalise the Church and to sacralize or sanctify the world. It is a Kingdom heresy and I say 'heresy' because in the end it destroys the gospel and deceives people. It causes Christians to stumble and lose their way, to fail to persevere, to be choked by the riches and the cares of this world. Bavinck's kingdom is a mammon-snare that is a road to perdition.
It would seem that the dissolution of Christendom (the notion itself being unbiblical if not farcical) in conjunction with the epistemological fragmentation wrought by the Enlightenment, provoked a reaction in which thinkers like Kuyper, Bavinck, and others within the Reformed sphere sought to find a way to reunify society and bring cohesion back into a culture shattered by revolution, economic upheaval, and a new secular ethic. In order to do this they (unintentionally I'm sure) seriously diluted the historical Calvinist notion of depravity. In some cases their optimism concerning man and his ability (via common grace) at times flirts with an almost Pelagian ethos. Additionally the consequences of the exile from Eden and the death-curse placed on the world (spawning this present evil age) was re-cast into a new model that downplays the effects of the Fall, focusing on the original good of nature - even to the point of sanctifying it and redeeming it. It's as if they think Eden can be reified in this age. While these thinkers denounced pantheism it is not a little ironic that their monistic theology brought the Church much closer to it (the worship of creation) and at the very least engendered a new era of confusion about the nature of the Kingdom and our calling in relation to it during these Last Days.
Tragically in the Reformed and larger Evangelical world these doctrines have corrupted those who otherwise try and retain some sense of pilgrim theology. Those in the Reformed sphere who advocate Amillennialism and a Lutheran-ish Two Kingdom Theology have (for the most part) been affected by this Dutch strain of philosophical theology and while they formally reject the Postmillennialist Triumphalism that long dominated the Reformed heritage (and lives on today) - they embrace it nonetheless by means of this theology of Common Grace. They deny it entry by means of the front door - but it enters through the back. The antithesis is watered down and blurred and while they reject the Christianisation programmes of the Reconstructionists and others, their embrace of Dominionism functionally undermines their claims, and like a cancer effectively cancels out any attempts they would make in terms of the Church living in opposition to the world.
It is to be lamented that one of the only factions that understands this and has consciously rejected Kuyperianism is that of Hoeksema's Protestant Reformed Church. In their case the driving force of this rejection is their hyper-Calvinism as much as anything else - a rationalist reading of the doctrine of election. By making this primary, and relying (in rationalist fashion) on deduction they easily identify the problems associated with Kuyper's view of Common Grace - a view more or less in concert with Bavinck. And so while their critiques can be withering, they are largely motivated by theological error. That said, some of their writings concerning eschatology and antithesis remain the best extant examples of Reformed theology criticising the Kuyperian understanding of Common Grace. But given their hyper-Calvinism they go too far and in this and other areas they lose their way.
Let us hope that the present crisis in terms of 'Christian culture' and the domination of Dominionist theology will lead to a further questioning of the Magisterial Reformation's traditions but in particular this egregious and destructive strain that emerged with Bavinck, Kuyper, and others in the context of the late 19th century. In trying to wrestle with modernity and the age of political and industrial revolution, Church leaders sought to find a new modus vivendi. Some groups turned to Fundamentalism and legalism. Others such as Kuyper and Bavinck found a way to re-focus the eyes of the Church in the new world and carve out a place of status and influence, a means for the Church to have a voice, exercise some power and retain respect.
They developed these rather ingenious models and yet they have proven to be destructive because they were not Biblical. Until this is exposed and these men and their teachings are denounced, nothing will change. We will continue to see this theology permutate into new forms of worldliness and compromise. Some will take up their banner as they arm themselves and vie for power in the framework of Right-wing political action. Others will also claim them as they seek the peaceful compromise of middle class life perpetually moving the goalposts and redefining terms and concepts in order to retain their standing.
A return to the Scriptures and to the New Testament will mean a categorical rejection of the Kuyperian model and with it the monist theology of Herman Bavinck.
See also:
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2024/11/athens-jerusalem-and-foundations-of.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-architect-of-modern-evangelicalism-i.html