Herman Bavinck

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"humanity is not an aggregate of individuals but an organic unity, one race, one family." III.102

"...in saying that God is not the cause of sin, we have not said everything. Scripture, which strongly distances God from all wickedness, firmly announces, on the other hand, that his counsel and government also extend to sin." III.59

Sin isn't rational, nor is it lawful; it's lawlessness; it isn't necessary to the existence of creatures, much less to the existence of God. The good is necessary even for evil to exist, but the good doesn't need evil, nor does holiness need sin,nor truth falsehood,nor God Satan

The world was first conceived by God and thereupon came into being by his omnipotent speech; after receiving its existence, it does not exist apart from him or in opposition to him, but continues to rest in his spirit." RD II, 262

In all circumstances of life, it gives us good confidence in our faithful God & Father that he will provide whatever we need for body & soul and that he will turn to our good whatever adversity he sends us in this sad world, since he is able to do this [& desires to do this]RDII

Reprobation is an act of justice, as predestination is an act of grace. God manifests his virtues in both." RD II.351

"Man is a rational animal, a thinking reed, a being existing between angels and animals, related to but distinct from both. He unites and reconciles within himself both heaven and earth, things both invisible and visible." RD II, 556

The kingship of Christ over his church consists in that by this word and Spirit he gathers and governs his own and protects and keeps them in the redemption acquired." IV. 372

"God’s delight in his creatures is part and parcel of his delight in himself." II.251

Every change is foreign to God. In him there is no change in time, for he is eternal; nor in location, for he is omnipresent; nor in essence, for he is pure being." II.156

The content of dogmatics is the knowledge of God as he has revealed it in Christ through his Word." I.110

The “glory of the Lord” is the splendor and brilliance that is inseparably associated with all of God’s attributes and his self-revelation in nature and grace, the glorious form in which he everywhere appears to his creatures." II.252

True blessedness, far from destroying the will, in fact raises it to its highest level of activity, for love is the most abundantly powerful energy of the will. II.232

... a miracle is not a violation of natural law nor an intervention in the natural order. From God’s side it is an act that does not more immediately and directly have God as its cause than any ordinary event..." II.610

"man forms a unity of the material and spiritual world, a mirror of the universe, a connecting link, compendium, the epitome of all of nature, a microcosm, &, precisely on that account, also the image and likeness of God, his son & heir, a micro-divine-being (mikrotheos)" II.562

Theology as a particular science assumes that God has unmistakably revealed himself; IOW, it assumes the existence, the self-revelation, & the knowability of God & therefore proceeds from a highly significant dogma. A dogmatically free theology/dogmatics, is a self-contradiction.

"The covenant of grace is unilateral, indissolubly grounded in the merciful promises of the sovereign God." III.193

Now the fact that the world is the theater of God’s self-revelation can hardly be denied." II.56

The moment monotheism is no longer supported by belief in the Trinity, it risks losing its purity, being threatened by pantheism or monism, on the one hand, and by polytheism or pluralism, on the other." II.119