Herman Bavinck

Prayer, which forms the heart of religion, has its ground in the belief that God is not only a personal being, but also is able to govern the world by his power, wisdom, and goodness, and make it subservient to man's sal…

Then we thank God, not that we must, but that we may believe.

Man is a riddle that only finds its solution in God.

In creation God manifests the power of his mind; in revelation, which has redemption for its centre, he discloses to us the greatness of his heart.

It fails to raise us above the actual, and supplies no power stronger than the world; it brings no peace, and offers no rest on the Father-heart of God.

The content of the Christian faith is not a scientific theory, nor a philosophical formula for explaining the world, but a recognition and confession of the great works of God, which are being created through the ages, e…

Conversion is a turning back to God, but at the same time a coming to one's self.

The whole special revelation which has its centre in Christ has no other content and no other meaning than to lay this firm foundation whereon the new humanity can be built. Christ is the head, and the church is his body…

What neither nature nor history, neither mind nor heart, neither science nor art can teach us, it makes known to us,—the fixed, unalterable will of God to rescue the world and save sinners, a will at variance with well-n…

Man's highest good is God, and God alone.

Belief in such a special revelation is the starting-point and the foundation-stone of Christian theology.

Christianity is the absolutely spiritual religion, because it is the only religion which sets religion in relation to God alone; therefore it is nothing else but religion; the idea of religion is completely fulfilled in…

But Deism, springing up in England, emancipated the world from God, reason from revelation, the will from grace.

The desire has reasserted itself in modern theology and philosophy to do justice to this central fact of universal history, and to trace on all sides the lines of connection established by God himself between revelation…

Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics.

The Gospel is a joyful tiding, not only for the individual person but also for humanity, for the family, for society, for the state, for art and science, for the entire cosmos, for the whole groaning creation.

With the reality of revelation, therefore, Christianity stands or falls.

The true religion which shall satisfy our mind and heart, our conscience and our will, must be one that does not shut us up in, but lifts us up high above, the world; in the midst of time It must impart to us eternity; i…

Between the freedom of the Christian man, on behalf of which Luther entered the lists, and the liberty, equality, fraternity, which the Revolution inscribed on its banner, the difference is fundamental. Luther and Voltai…

In every moment of time beats the pulse of eternity; every point in space is filled with the omnipresence of God; the finite is supported by the infinite, all becoming is rooted in being.

But unity, true unity, a unity which does not destroy differentiation, but rather includes and enfolds it, may come, and can come, only when the entire world is conceived as the product of the wisdom and power which reve…

Without revelation religion sinks back into a pernicious superstition.

The world itself rests on revelation; revelation is the presupposition, the foundation, the secret of all that exists in all its forms. The deeper science pushes its investigations, the more clearly will it discover that…

Revelation, while having its centre in the Person of Christ in its periphery extends to the uttermost ends of creation. It does not stand isolated in nature and history, does not resemble an island in the ocean, nor a dr…

The resurrection is the fundamental restoration of all culture. Christ himself took again the body in which he bore on the cross the sin of the world; he has received all power in heaven and earth, and is exalted by God…

They firmly believed that the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; and they considered themselves the new humanity, in which Jew and Greek found their unity and destination.

This, after all, is what man seeks in religion,--strength, life, a personal power, that can pardon sin, receive us into favor, and cause us to triumph joyfully over a world of sin and death.