Quotes from Herman Bavinck

In case a dogma is not based on divine authority, it is wrong to call it by that name, and it should not have a place in the faith of the church.

It is, moreover, of the greatest importance for every believer, particularly for the dogmatician, to know which Scriptural truths, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have been brought to universal recognition in the church of Christ. By this process, after all, the church is kept from immediately mistaking a private opinion for the truth of God.

Life often mocks every system; it is richer and fuller than the deepest thinker in all his wisdom can imagine.

Culture in the broadest sense includes all the labor which human power expends on nature.

He accepted the social and political conditions as they were, made no endeavor to reform them, and confined himself exclusively to setting the value which they possessed for the kingdom of heaven.

God the Father has reconciled His created but fallen world through the death of His Son, and renews it into a Kingdom of God by His Spirit.

The truth and value of Christianity do not depend on the fruits which it has borne for civilization and culture: it has its own independent value; it is the realization of the kingdom of God on earth;

One human nature is common to all the descendants of Adam, and it is, for all men, guilty and polluted

If there ever is to be a blessed humanity it must be preceded by a radical change in human nature.

When God binds Himself to being our God, then at the same time He binds Himself to be the God of our seed. With His grace He follows the line of the generations. He executes election along the route and pathway of the covenant. As Father of all mercies He walks the path that He Himself, as Father of everything, has drawn.

The peculiarity of the Christian religion as has been so often shown and acknowledged even by opponents, lies in the person of Christ.

The segregation and the election of Israel served the sole purpose of maintaining, unmixed and unadulterated, continuing and perfecting, the original revelation, which threatened to be lost so that it might again in the fullness of time be made the property of the whole of mankind.