Herman Bavinck · 12 of 12

Lecture 10. Revelation and the Future · Part 3

If we take into account all these facts, it is not to be wondered at that culture is often treated with deep disdain, not only by Christians, but by the children whom it has fed and nourished. There are those—and their number increases—who, with Buckle, notwithstanding the intellectual development which has taken place, do not believe in any moral progress and speak only of a circle of development. Others go still farther, and are of opinion that the human race, just in consequence of culture, is retrograding physically, psychically, intellectually, morally, and socially, and that safety can be obtained only by a radical change, namely, by a return to nature, or even to the animal state in which men originally lived. The great number of reformers who appear to-day in every domain of thought and action, indeed, sufficiently shows that culture, with all its blessings, does not content the heart, and does not meet all the needs of the soul. Evolutionists and socialists, though glorying in the conquests which the man of culture has made, vie with each other in condemning present-day society, and build all their hopes on the future. But that future is distant and uncertain ; for he who considers the moral corruption which has attacked our culture at the core, and takes into consideration the perils which press upon us from without,— the red, the black, and the yellow peril,—feels the anxious question rising within him, whether our whole modern culture is not destined sometime to devastation and annihilation like that of Babylon and Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Thus it appears that neither science nor philosophy, neither ethics nor culture, can give that security with regard to the future which we have need of, not only for our thought, but also for our whole life and action. This need of security cannot be voided by saying that every one must do his duty and leave the future to itself. For though there is great truth in the Christian motto, “Blind for the future, and seeing in the commandment,” such true resignation is not born of doubt,but of faith, and does not leave the future to itself, but to God’s fatherly guidance. The need of security concerning the future and the ultimate end of the world, therefore, always remains with us, because everything we value in this life is inseparably connected with the future. If the world at the end of its development is dissolved in a chaos, or sinks back into everlasting sleep, the value of personality, of religious and ethical life, and also of culture, cannot be maintained. The weal and woe of man, and the safety of our souls, are closely interwoven with the final destiny of the world. Therefore, in order to live and to die happily we need a consolation which is firm and durable, and gives security to our thought and labor. All world-views, therefore, end in an eschatology, and all eflorts at reformation are animated by faith in the future.

If neither science nor culture, nor the combination of both, can give us such security, the question remains whether there is anything else in the whole world in which we can trust at all times, in adversity and death, with our whole heart? Now history teaches, with a distinctness which precludes all doubt, that there is only one power which can give such a security, and can awaken such an absolute confidence in the heart always and everywhere, and that is religion. While science can boast of only a few martyrs, religion counts its witnesses by thousands and tens of thousands. Who would be ready to sacrifice his life for a purely mathematical or scientific truth? If we wish to find the security which gives us rest in life and death and keeps us firm in the midst of the storms of doubt, we must seek it in religion, or we can find it nowhere. All certainty concerning the origin, the essence, and the end of things, is based on religion. As soon as a world-view attacks these problems, it is met by the alternative, either to content itself with guesses and doubts, or to take refuge in a religious interpretion of the world. Comte thought, indeed, that religion and metaphysics belonged to the past, but none the less made his positivism serviceable for the preaching of a new religion; and Herbert Spencer did not explain how he, in his philosophy, could accept an unknowable power behind phenomena, and could give expression to the suggestion that this power is the same as that “which in ourselves wells up in the form of consciousness.”

The reason why religion alone can create such a security lies at hand. First, it always includes faith in a divine power, which is distinct from the world, far above it, and can govern and guide it according to its own will; and, secondly, it puts man himself personally into connection with the divine power, so that he sees in the affairs of God his own affairs, and allied with God can defy the power of the whole world, even unto death. But this idea of religion has only come to its true and full embodiment in Christianity. For all religions which exist without the special revelation in Christ, and equally all confessions and world-views which differ from it, are characterized by this common peculiarity, that they identify God and the world, the natural and the ethical, being and evil, creation and fall, and therefore mix up religion with superstition and magic. There is only one religion which moves on pure lines and is conceived altogether as religion, and that is Christianity.

In this religion God is the creator of all things. The whole world is the work of his hands; matter itself is made by him, and before its making was the object of his thought. All being and becoming thus embody a revelation of God. This revelation is the starting point of the unity of nature, the unity of the human race, the unity of history, and is also the source of all laws,—the laws of nature, of history, and of all development. The ideas and norms which govern religious, ethical, and social life, and appear in the self-consciousness and the thought of humanity, are the product of this revelation of God. In a word, that the world is no chaos, but a cosmos, a universe, is the silent postulate of all science and art for which they are indebted to the revelation which Christianity makes known to us. Nature and grace, culture and cultus, are built upon the same foundations.

But this revelation is not sufficient. God is creator: he is further the reconciler of all things. There is much evil in the world,—natural and moral evil, sin and misery. Christianity is the one religion which connects these two kinds of evil and yet distinguishes them. Sin does not lie in matter, nor in nature, nor in the substance of things, but it belongs to the will of the creature; it is of ethical nature, and thus capable of being expiated, effaced, extinguished. It can be separated from the creature, so that it disappears and the creature remains intact, yea, much more, is restored and glorified. For God is above the world, and is also above sin and all evil. He allowed it because he could expiate it. So he maintained through all centuries and among all men the longing and the capacity for redemption, and wrought that redemption himself in the fulness of time, in the midst of history, in the crucified Christ. “God was, in Christ, reconciling the world with himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” The cross of Golgotha is the divine settlement with, the divine condemnation of sin. There it is revealed that sin exists; it is no fiction which can be conquered by thought, no external defect which can be obliterated by culture; but it is an awful reality, and has a world-historical significance. But although it exists, it has no right of existence; it should not exist, and therefore it shall not exist.

For God is the creator and redeemer, but also finally the restorer and renewer of all things. The history of mankind after the resurrection of Christ is the execution of the judicial sentence which was passed on the cross, of the sentence which in Christ condemns sin and absolves the sinner, and therefore gives to him a right and claim to forgiveness and renewal. The cross of Christ divides history into two parts, - the preparation for and the accomplishment of reconciliation; but in both parts, from the creation to the cross and from the cross to the advent, it is one whole, one uninterrupted work of God. Christianity is as religion much more than a matter of feeling or temperament; it embraces the whole man, all humanity, and the totality of the world. It is a work of God, a revelation from the beginning to the end of the ages, in word and in deed, for mind and heart, for the individual and the community. And it has its heart and centre in the person and the work of Christ.

Christ occupies in Christianity quite a different position from that which Zarathustra or Confucius, Buddha or Mohammed, hold in the religion which was founded by each of them. Christ is not the founder of Christianity, nor the first confessor of it, nor the first Christian. But he is Christianity itself, in its preparation, fulfilment, and consummation. He created all things, reconciled all things, and renews all things. Because all things have in him their source, their being, and their unity, he also gathers in one all things under himself as Head, both those which are in heaven and those on earth. He is Prophet and Priest, but also King, who does not cease his work until he has delivered the kingdom perfect and complete to God the Father. This one equally sovereign and almighty, holy, and gracious will of God, which meets us and speaks to our conscience in the person and the, work of Christ, is the firm basis of our certainty, of our certainty concerning the past, the present, and the future. For nobody can deny that if there is and works such a will, then the origin, development, and destiny of the world are certain; then the life and fate of every man who identifies himself with this will of God and makes God’s cause his own is assured now and for eternity. But the world of science and art, culture and technique, knows nothing of such a merciful will of God. It can advance no further, with all its thoroughness and sagacity, than the postulate that there must be such a will of God.

But even this result of human knowledge and effort is a significant fact; for it contains the confession that the whole world, with all its development, is lost and must perish if it is not sustained and guided by an almighty will, which can cause light to appear out of darkness, life out of death, and glory out of suffering. What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man to conceive otherwise than as a wish or a sigh, is revealed to us in the gospel. Jesus Christ came into the world to preserve it and to save it. This is the content of the gospel and the testimony of Scripture in spite of all criticism and opposition. By this testimony the prophets have lived, and the apostles and the whole Christian Church, and by it men will live till the end of time. For the truth of this testimony lies outside and beyond the bounds of all criticism in the system of the whole world, in the existence of the Christian church, and in the need of the human heart. The world cries: Such a will of God ought to be, if I am ever to be saved; and the gospel says: There is such a will of God; lift your eyes to the cross. Between the world as it exists around us, with all its laws and all its calamities; between culture, with all its glory and all its miseries; between the human heart, with all its aspirations and all its pains; between this whole universe and the will of God as it is made known to us in the gospel, there exists a spiritually and historically indissoluble unity. Take away that will, and the world is lost; acknowledge that will, and the world is saved. Revelation in nature and revelation in Scripture form, in alliance with each other, an harmonious unity which satisfies the requirements of the intellect and the needs of the heart alike.

This result of a philosophy of revelation is finally confirmed by this, that the will of God, which, according to the gospel, aims at the salvation of the world, yet acknowledges fully here and hereafter the diversity which exists in the world of creatures. Monism in all its forms sacrifices the richness of reality to the abstract unity of its system. It asserts that all that exists is but the development of one matter and one power; it sees in the diversity only modifications of the same being; it dissolves even the contrasts of true and false, of good and evil, of right and wrong, into historical moments of the same, movement, and it concludes with the declaration that the world at the end of the process returns to chaos, to darkness and death, perhaps after a while to begin anew its monotonous round. The eschatological expectations which present themselves under the name of the restitution of all things, hypothetical or absolute universalism, and conditional immortality, also have received so much sympathy only because man closes his eyes consciously or unconsciously to reality and transforms the wishes of his heart into prophecies of the future. By the magic formulas of monism and evolution men make the world to be and to become in the past, present, and even in the future, everything they please. But reality scoffs at these phantasies; it places before us the sorrowful facts that the power of evil raises itself against good, that sin does not annihilate man, but hardens him spiritually, and that virtue and happiness, sin and punishment, are not in proportion to each other here upon earth as all hearts and consciences require. And yet since this is what really exists, it must in some way be in accordance with the holiness and goodness of God.

The gospel is suited to this reality, and is quite in agreement with it; it takes and acknowledges the world exactly as it is shown to our unbiassed view; it does not fashion it after a prescribed pattern, but accepts it unprejudicedly, with all its diversities and contrasts, with all its problems and enigmas. Man is indeed what Scripture describes him, and the world appears as Scripture shows it to us. A superficial view may indeed deny it; deeper experience and more serious inquiry always lead back again to the acknowledgment of its truth; the greatest minds, the noblest souls, the most pious hearts have repeated and confirmed the witness of Scripture from age to age. Scripture therefore does not stand isolated in its contemplation of the world and life, but is surrounded, upheld, and supported on all sides by the sensus communis of the whole of humanity; there is neither speech nor language where its voice is not heard. The world certainly was not originated in a monistic way, and it does not exist in this way. From the beginning it has shown a great variety, which has had its origin in divine appointment. This variety has been destroyed by sin and changed into all kinds of opposition. The unity of humanity was dissolved into a multiplicity of peoples and nations. Truth, religion, and the moral law have not kept their unity and sovereignty, but are confronted by lies, false religion, and unrighteousness. So the world was, and so it still remains. In spite of all striving after unity by means of world conquest, political alliance, and international arbitration, trade unions and economical interests ; in spite of the advocacy of an independent, positive, and common world-language, world-science, world-morality, and world-culture—unity has not and cannot be realized. For these forces can at the most accomplish an external and temporal unity, but they do not change the heart and do not make the people of one soul and one speech. The one true unity can only be brought about by religion, by means of missions. If there is ever to be a humanity one in heart and one in soul, then it must be born out of return to the one living and true God.

Although the gospel lays this missionary work on the consciences of all its confessors with the greatest earnestness, yet it never flatters us with the hope that thereby the inner spiritual unity of mankind will be accomplished in the present dispensation. The idea of a millennium stands in direct opposition to the description of the future which runs through the whole of the New Testament. Jesus portrays to his disciples much rather a life of strife, oppression, and persecution. He promises them on earth not a crown, but a cross. The highest ideal for the Christian is not to make peace with the world, with science, with culture at any price, but in the world to keep himself from the evil one. We have no guarantee that the church and the world will not as fiercely strive with one another in the future as in the first centuries of Christianity. We have not the least assurance that, in spite, of all preaching of tolerance, a persecution which will exceed all previous oppressions will not break out against the church of Christ before the end of time. On the contrary, there is great danger that modern culture, progressing in its anti-supernaturalistic course, will be stirred up to anger against the steadfastness of believers and attempt to accomplish by oppression what it cannot obtain by reasoning and argument. At any rate, this is what the teaching of Christ and the apostles predicts of the last days.

Because it recognizes this reality the gospel cannot end in a monistic formula; there remains difference, there remains an opposition, until and, indeed, even after the advent. Heaven and hell in what concerns their essence are no products of imagination, but elements of all religious faith, and even postulates of all thought which seriously takes into account the majesty of the moral world-order, the ineradicable consciousness of justice in the heart of man, and the indisputable witness of his conscience. But in contradistinction to all other religions Christianity teaches that the position which man will hold in the future world is, in principle, determined by the relation in which he stands to God and his revelation, and that the allotment of that position will be made by no one else than Chdst, who created the world, who continually supports it in its being and unity, who is the life and light of man always and everywhere, who appeared in the fulness of time as the saviour of the world, and who therefore knows the world through and through, and can judge it in perfect justice. Nobody will be able to make objection to the righteousness and equity of his sentence. Whatever may be the result of the world-history, it will be acknowledged by all willingly or unwillingly, be raised above all criticism, and be consonant with God’s virtues. Right and left from the great dividing line there remains room for such endless diversity that no single idle word will be forgotten, nor will a single good thought or noble action fall unnoted. Nothing of any value will be lost in the future; all our works do follow us, and the kings and nations of the earth will bring together into the city of God all their glory and honor. Above all differences, and over every variety, there will extend into the future the one holy and gracious will of God, which is the bond of the whole universe, and to which all will be subject and ancillary. The absolute, immutable, and inviolable supremacy of that will of God is the light which special revelation holds before our soul’s eye at the end of time. For monism the present economy is as a short span of life between two eternities of death, and consciousness a lightning flash in the dark night. But for the Christian this dark world is always irradiated from above by the splendor of divine revelation, and under its guidance it moves onward towards the kingdom of light and life. Round about revelation are clouds and darkness; nevertheless righteousness and judgment are the foundation of God’s throne.