Bavinck on supra/infra-lapsarian predestination
I recently read Herman Bavinck on supralapsarian and infralapsarian predestination. (link) Bavinck’s approach is intriguing. He argues that both the supralapsarian and infralapsarian systems have their strengths and weaknesses, so he cherry-picks the strengths and discards the weaknesses as he presents his own unsystematized views on the subject of predestination. To be clear, he is not saying that he is unable to systematize predestination, but rather that the topic cannot be systematized.This approach has its drawbacks. Without a logical order, the topic can’t really be explained, nor can Bavinck be sure his system is free from contradiction. Advocates of Bavinck's approach claim greater freedom to interpret scripture, but if your interpretation of one passage is in tension with another passage, you can never be sure your interpretation is correct. Systematic theology is a lot of hard work. You have to keep many pieces in view simultaneously to ensure you don't run into contradiction. Defining terms, uncovering implications, deriving deductions and organizing explanations help ensure your system is free from contradiction. But you can never take the shortcut of forcing your system on a passage of scripture; again systematic theology is hard work.
Bavinck accepts conclusions from the supra and sublapsarian positions that are derived from contradictory premises. To avoid contradiction, Bavinck simply avoids the premises, but then where did the conclusion come from? To me, that’s like admiring the roof of a house while laying dynamite to the foundation in the hope that the roof will just float. More to the point, scripture states a house divided against itself cannot stand and that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Perhaps Bavinck’s approach is “the new Calvinism”. This post on Pen & Parchment explains why Calvinism is the least rational option. This style is quite different than the Calvinism I am used to. Successful or not, Hodge, Edwards and Turretin seem insistent on attempting to reconciling apparent discrepancies. So on the one hand, it's tempting to simply dismiss Bavinck as "not the reformed view", but on the other hand his views are perhaps represent many Calvinists.
Since Bavinck doesn’t have a system, God willing, I will to respond to his points individually rather than as a whole.
Comments
I mean, reading Bavinck and Patton resolved and solved nothing.
What is your view? Are you ready to come out with it clearly, succinctly and purposefully so I can go home and rest up a bit? :)
By the way, Bavinck did write a systematic theology (4 vol.), wherein I presume he gives a more systematic account of these issues.
My view? I hold to conditional election. Bavinck is fairly dismissive of my view in this particular article, so it may not come up as I go over Bavinck's article, but I will try to summarize what I think at the end.
God be with you,
Dan
Thanks for commenting. I found your post insightful, although I am not quite sure what to make of it just yet.
God be with you,
Dan
Thanks for explaining Bavinck's view of freedom. So far, I had only read his view on predestination, so adding that element is helpful as well.
Would Bavinck or Barth have taken "dialectic" as far as say Kant?
God be with you,
Dan
I'm not really sure how to characterize Bavinck vis-a-vis Kant, largely because I've only read bits of Bavinck here and there -- but on a spectrum I would put him somewhere between "biblical positivism" on the right and existential dialectics on the left (with Kant, of course, approaching existential dialectics). Such a broad characterization isn't too helpful, since I would say the same of Barth, though Barth was clearly closer to an existential dialectics (though he moderated during his work on the Church Dogmatics). We may simply not have enough of Bavinck's metaphysical thought to say exactly where he stands in relation to Kant's work.
Barth, however, did an enormous amount of work relating to the issues pressed by Kant. The problem is that Barth is notoriously difficult to interpret, with some scholars (e.g., Bruce McCormack at Princeton) emphasizing his dialectics and others (e.g., John Webster at Aberdeen) emphasizing his holism (humanism) and practical (if not theoretical) biblical positivism. Regardless, Barth is certainly in agreement with Kant's attack on synthetic proofs for knowledge of God (e.g., Aquinas), though he did have a certain fondness for Anselm's analytic proof. Barth and Kant both closed nature off to God. Kant though did believe that the moral faculty required God's existence (and certain personal attributes), but Barth went further by attacking this "God of morality" as an idol of the European liberal Protestant establishment, an idol in decisive opposition to the true God, the God of Jesus Christ. So, whereas Nietzsche successfully rejected Kantianism through philosophical arguments (via the problem of evil), Barth rejected Kantianism through theological arguments.
Kant didn't take his dialectics as far as Barth, because he was unwilling to sacrifice an absolute ground for morality, potentially known by all. Kant was afraid of what this would do to individual dignity and societal well-being, and since Kant presupposed that these *must* be constitutive of the "human," God must exist. It was a practical proof, disguised as logic. Nietzsche rightly saw the farce, and most of subsequent philosophy has been an attempt to grapple with human dignity vis-a-vis the death of God (existentialism, logical positivism, pragmatism, poststructuralism, etc. all offering variant answers). I think Barth receives this heritage of philosophy's demise and utilizes it to the advantage of theology; theology alone (i.e., God alone) gives us God.
By the way, I don't mean that Barth was anti-supernaturalistic (certainly not!) -- I'm only talking about a philosophical "closing off" of nature (design, causation, degrees of perfection, etc.) from God.
Thanks for explaining about Kant. That orients me a bit. Let me come back to a point you made:
There are no formal contradictions in Bavinck or even Barth, but there is a lot of "we can't go there" (because of the qualitative difference between God and not-God).
I am a bit apprehensive here, because I suspect a part of the "we can't go there" may be motivated by assumed epistemological limitations, rather than the utter otherliness of God. If God is revealing Himself, I wouldn't want people to miss it because they are suspicious of their own minds.
God be with you,
Dan
The epistemological limitations for Kant were inherent in human nature -- the finite simply cannot "get to" the infinite (the essential). It is a limitation in the human mind as such. For Reformed thinkers like Bavinck and Barth, the limitation is fallen human nature. Sin is the problem, not mere creatureliness. Thus, once the sin is overcome, once grace is operative, then God can be known and, by extension, the essence(s) of creaturely reality. Thus, the finite can get to the infinite even though it is finite -- that is a decisive difference from Kant (and most Enlightenment thinkers) who rejected the supernatural and all notions of operative grace. Kant is only willing to deal with the immanent processes of creaturely existence; Reformed theology is completely unwilling to deal with the creature without the Creator, a Creator who must reconstitute the creature after the Fall. But, the problem still remains as to whether Reformed theology is getting its notions of nature and grace (such as "total depravity") from divine revelation (scripture) alone or from philosophical and/or experiential reasons. I think it's both -- reinforcing each other.
Also, it should be noted that Reformed (and Catholic) thought emphasizes the hiddenness of God because of our proclivities to self-sufficiency (pride) and idolatry. Until we receive our new body in a new creation, we are under the effects of sin -- effects which necessitate God's obscurity and, thus, the dialectics which emphasize this obscurity. Dialectics preserves the holiness of God -- an "otherness" as righteousness.
Does regeneration remove the epistemological limitations? If so, what place does “don’t go there” have in theology? If not, does the source of the limitations matter?
God be with you,
Dan
To a limited degree, because regeneration is not complete until the resurrection of our bodies. Until the eschaton -- the new creation -- we live in a creaturely reality subject to sin, both in ourselves and in others. As such, we cannot apprehend the fullness of God. The thought forms in which we contemplate God are ever subject to distortions, thus they are always relative and incomplete (i.e., dialectical). We do not even know what it is like to have a thought form capable of apprehending God without distortion. The inability of our concept of "freedom" to do full justice to heavenly reality (a "freedom" with only one determination -- goodness) is one example. Sin always poses itself as a proper constituent of freedom, but it is only a reduction of freedom -- a limiting of freedom (i.e., not freedom). But, in our pre-resurrection state, we have no experience of freedom without this limiting, so we must think of freedom as consisting of an option for evil. From our perspective, this is freedom. Yet, we also must think of freedom as not consisting of this option for evil, else heavenly reality is mechanistic/fatalist and not free. This is the freedom known by faith -- and faith alone. Once again, we're stuck with dialectic: a freedom inclusive of evil (life ending in death) and a freedom exclusive of evil (eternal life with God). Revelation requires that we use the best concepts (thought forms) that we've got in order to communicate a reality of "holy" concepts. Holiness is "wholly other" (to use a Kierkegaardian expression used a lot by Barth, Brunner, Torrance, etc.), but it nonetheless finds concrete expression in Jesus Christ. Christ is thus the "finite" entry-point into a legitimate use of human semantics to convey God (holiness).
Does this mean we cannot know just certain spiritual truths or all of them? It would be hard to accept the idea that we cannot know all spiritual truths.
God be with you,
Dan
God be with you,
Dan
Yes. We know love, forgiveness, mercy, wrath, freedom, bondage, sin, grace, disgrace -- all that has been revealed of God and ourselves under God. I should have clarified: We know these things only in radical dependence on God, on His revelation. Thus, Christ is the ground and security of our knowledge of these things. Apart from Christ, we do not truly know of these things, and probably the best we could come-up with is some variant of gnostic dualism where good and evil are not ultimately detachable (this characterizes everything from Eastern philosophy to American afternoon talk shows).
The limits of our thought forms (concepts) are not so radical that they cannot know spiritual realities (thus, by faith they are known), but they are so limited that they serve sin outside of operative grace.
OK good. To that extent, it seems Barth moved away from Kant. As far as us not being able to know everything about God this side of the grave, of course I agree. I like Arminius' explanation:
IV. But there are two modes of this second perception from the works and the word of God. The First is that of Affirmation, (which is also styled by Thomas Aquinas, "the mode of Causality and by the habitude of the principle,") according to which the simple perfections which are in the creatures, as being the productions of God, are attributed analogically to God according to some similitude. (Psalm xciv, 9, 10; Matt. vii, 11; Isa. xlix, 15.) The Second is that of Negation or Removal, according to which the relative perfections and all the imperfections which appertain to the creatures, as having been produced out of nothing, are removed from God. (Isa. iv, 8, 9; 1 Cor. i, 25.) To the mode of Affirmation, (because it is through the habitude of the cause and principle, to the excellence of which no effect ever rises,) that of Pre-eminence must be added, according to which the perfections that are predicated of the creatures are understood [to be] infinitely more perfect in God. (Isa. xl, 15, 17, 22, 25.) Though this mode be affirmative and positive in itself, (for as the nature of God necessarily exists, so it is necessarily known,) in positively and not in negation; yet it cannot be enunciated or expressed by us, except through a Negation of those modes according to which the creatures are partakers of their own perfections, or the perfections in creatures are circumscribed. Those modes, being added to the perfections of the creatures, produce this effect, that those which, considered without them, were simple perfections, are relative perfections, and by that very circumstance are to be removed from God. Hence it appears, that the mode of Pre-eminence does not differ in species from the mode of Affirmation and Negation.
V. Besides, in the entire nature of things and in the Scriptures themselves, only two substances are found, in which is contained every perfection of things. They are Essence and Life, the former of them constituting the perfection of all existing creatures; the latter, that of only some them, and those the most perfect. (Gen. 1; Psalm civ, 29, 148; Acts xvii, 28.) Beyond these two the human mind cannot possibly comprehend any substance, indeed, it cannot raise its conceptions to any other: for it is itself circumscribed within the limits of created nature, of which it forms a part; it is therefore incapable of passing beyond the circle which encloses the whole. (Rev. i, 8; iv, 8; Dan. vi, 46.) Wherefore in the nature of God himself, only these two causes of motion, Essence and Life, can become objects of our consideration.
link
The idea is that we learn through similarity (this is like that). So to the extent God is unlike us, He is unknowable.
Happy Eucharist,
Dan
I too think Arminius is basically getting it right by not abstracting Being (Essence and Life) from God, the God of Scripture.