Reformed Dogmatics : Volume 1: Prolegomena

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)

Graphite sketch by Erik G. Lubbers

© 2003 by the Dutch Reformed Translation Society

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

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Ebook edition created 2015

Ebook corrections 02.23.2022

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ISBN 978-1-4412-0614-5

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dutch Reformed Translation Society

Preface

Acknowledgments

Editor’s Introduction

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO DOGMATICS

  1. The Science of Dogmatic Theology

Terminology

Dogma, Dogmatics, and Theology

The Content of Theology

Is Theology a Science?

Theology and Faith

The Science of God

The Encyclopedic Place of Dogmatic Theology

  2. The Method and Organization of Dogmatic Theology

Apostles, Bishops, and the Return to Scripture

The Turn to the Subject

The Search for a Scientific, Objective Theology

The Certainty of Theological Knowledge

Biblical Theology and the Church

The Role of Faith

The Problem of Order

Order in Reformation Dogmatics

The Impact of Philosophy

The Foundation and Task of Prolegomena

PART II: THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY

  3. The Formation of Dogma: East and West

The Definition and Character of Dogma

Dogma in the Early Church

Dogma and Theology in the East

Dogma and Theology in the West

  4. Roman Catholic Dogmatics

Scholasticism

Protest and Response

Counter-Reformation and Neoscholasticism

Roman Catholicism and Modernity

  5. Lutheran Dogmatics

The Beginning of Lutheran Theology

Pietism and Rationalism

The Triumph of Philosophy

Resistance and Revision of Lutheran Orthodoxy

  6. Reformed Dogmatics

Lutherans and Calvinists

The Beginnings of Reformed Theology

Reformed Scholasticism

Challenges: Rationalism and Mysticism

Decline of Reformed Theology

Nineteenth-Century Streams

Reformed Theology in North America

PART III: FOUNDATIONS OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY (PRINCIPIA)

  7. Scientific Foundations

Theological Prolegomena

Foundations of Thought

Rationalism

Empiricism

Realism

  8. Religious Foundations

The Essence of Religion

The Seat of Religion: Intellect, Will, or Heart?

The Origin of Religion

PART IV: REVELATION (PRINCIPIUM EXTERNUM)

  9. The Idea of Revelation

No Religion without Revelation

Revelation in Theology and Philosophy

Nineteenth-Century Recovery of Revelation

Mediating Theology

Nineteenth-Century Philosophies of Revelation

Naturalist Confusion about Revelation

Impossibility of Scientific Neutrality

10. General Revelation

Natural and Supernatural Revelation

All Revelation Is Supernatural

General Revelation Is Insufficient

General Revelation and the Universality of Religion

General Revelation and Christian Discipleship

11. Special Revelation

Modes of Revelation

Revelation as God’s Self-Revelation

Revelation and Religion

12. Revelation in Nature and Holy Scripture

Natural and Supernatural

Roman Catholic Supernaturalism

The Reformational View

Rationalistic Naturalism

The Scriptural Difference

Monism and Theism

Miracles

Revelation, Sacred Scriptures, and History

Incarnation, Language, and the Bible

Continuing Revelation

13. The Inspiration of Scripture

The Witness of the Old Testament

The Witness of the New Testament

The Testimony of the Church

The Rise of Critical Protestantism

The Challenge to Inspiration Doctrine

Differing Views of Inspiration

Organic Inspiration

A Defense of Organic Inspiration

14. The Attributes of Scripture

Attributes in General

The Authority of Scripture

The Necessity of Scripture

Scripture and the Church

Beyond Scripture?

The Clarity of Scripture

The Sufficiency of Scripture

PART V: FAITH (PRINCIPIUM INTERNUM)

15. Faith and Theological Method

Internal Reception of Revelation

The Historical-Apologetic Method

The Speculative Method

The Religious-Empirical Method

The Ethical-Psychological Method

16. Faith and Its Ground

Appropriating Revelation by Faith

Two Kinds of Faith

Faith as Intellectual Assent

The Certainty of Faith

The Ground of Faith

Scripture Is Self-Authenticating

Divine and Human Logos

Demonstrating the Truth of Faith

The Testimony of the Spirit

17. Faith and Theology

Aversion to Theology

Faith’s Knowledge

Dogma and Greek Philosophy

How Much Knowledge?

The Grace of Faith

Reason Serving Faith

Bibliography

Select Scripture Index

Name Index

Subject Index

Notes

Back Cover

DUTCH REFORMED TRANSLATION SOCIETY

The Heritage of the Ages for Today

P.O. Box 7083

Grand Rapids, MI 49510

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Rev. Dr. Joel Beeke

president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics

Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dr. John Bolt

professor of systematic theology

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dr. Arthur F. De Boer

retired surgeon

Grand Haven, Michigan

Dr. James A. De Jong

president and professor of historical theology, emeritus

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Rev. David Engelsma

professor of theology

Protestant Reformed Seminary

Grandville, Michigan

Dr. I. John Hesselink

Albertus C. Van Raalte Professor of Systematic Theology, emeritus

Western Theological Seminary

Holland, Michigan

James R. Kinney

director of Baker Academic

Baker Book House Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dr. Nelson Kloosterman

professor of ethics and New Testament studies

Mid-America Reformed Seminary

Dyer, Indiana

Dr. Richard A. Muller

P. J. Zondervan Professor of Doctoral Studies

Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Adriaan Neele

Th.D. student, University of Utrecht, businessman

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dr. M. Eugene Osterhaven

Albertus C. Van Raalte Professor of Systematic Theology, emeritus

Western Theological Seminary

Holland, Michigan

Henry I. Witte

president, Witte Travel

consul of the government of the Netherlands

Grand Rapids, Michigan

PREFACE

The Dutch Reformed Translation Society (DRTS) was formed in 1994 by a group of businesspeople and professionals, pastors, and seminary professors, representing five different Reformed denominations, to sponsor the translation and facilitate the publication in English of classic Reformed theological and religious literature published in the Dutch language. It is incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in the State of Michigan and governed by a board of directors.

Believing that the Dutch Reformed tradition has many valuable works that deserve wider distribution than the limited accessibility of the Dutch language allows, society members seek to spread and strengthen the Reformed faith. The first project of the DRTS is the definitive translation of Herman Bavinck’s complete four-volume Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Reformed Dogmatics). The society invites those who share its commitment to and vision for spreading the Reformed faith to write for additional information.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor here gratefully acknowledges the helpful suggestions of several board members of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society and particularly the contribution of Dr. M. Eugene Osterhaven, emeritus Albertus C. Van Raalte Professor of Systematic Theology at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan. Dr. Osterhaven carefully read a number of chapters and made many helpful translation and stylistic suggestions as well as critical corrections. Calvin Theological Seminary Ph.D. student Rev. J. Mark Beach put in many hours checking bibliographic information, and CTS students Patricia Vesely and Courtney Hoekstra provided superb support in producing the final bibliography during the long summer of 2002. Finally, the efforts of each of these assistants were immeasurably helped by the theological librarians at Calvin College’s Hekman Library, Paul Fields and Lugene Schemper. To all, a heartfelt thanks.

The satisfaction of seeing this volume finally in print is mixed with sadness because John Vriend, whose initiative led to the formation of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society and who ably served as the translator of all four volumes of the Reformed Dogmatics, was unable to see this fruit of his labors. John Vriend went to be with his Lord on February 7, 2002.

John Bolt

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

With the publication of this first full volume of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, the Dutch Reformed Translation Society has reached a significant milestone in its decade-long project to publish the complete English translation from Dutch of Bavinck’s classic four-volume work. Prior to this, two half-volume works, one on the eschatology unit1 and the other on the creation unit2 had been published. The present volume is a translation of the entire first volume of Herman Bavinck’s magisterial work, material never before translated into English. A word or two on Bavinck the man and the theologian are in order at this point. Who was Herman Bavinck, and why is this work of theology so important?

Herman Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, first published one hundred years ago, represents the concluding high point of some four centuries of remarkably productive Dutch Reformed theological reflection. From Bavinck’s numerous citations of key Dutch Reformed theologians such as Voetius, De Moor, Vitringa, van Mastricht, Witsius, and Walaeus as well as of the important Leiden Synopsis purioris theologiae,3 it is clear he knew that tradition well and claimed it as his own. At the same time it also needs to be noted that Bavinck was not simply a chronicler of his own church’s past teaching. He seriously engaged other theological traditions, notably the Roman Catholic and the modern liberal Protestant ones, effectively mined the church fathers and great medieval thinkers, and placed his own distinct neo-Calvinist stamp on the Reformed Dogmatics.

KAMPEN AND LEIDEN

To understand the distinct Bavinck flavor, a brief historical orientation is necessary. Herman Bavinck was born on December 13, 1854. His father was an influential minister in the Dutch Christian Reformed Church (Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk) that had seceded from the National Reformed Church in the Netherlands twenty years earlier.4 The secession of 1834 was in the first place a protest against the state control of the Dutch Reformed Church; it also tapped into a long and rich tradition of ecclesiastical dissent on matters of doctrine, liturgy, and spirituality as well as polity. In particular, mention needs to be made here of the Dutch equivalent to English Puritanism, the so-called Second Reformation5 (Nadere Reformatie), the influential seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century movement of experiential Reformed theology and spirituality,6 as well as an early-nineteenth-century international, aristocratic, evangelical revival movement known as the Réveil.7 Bavinck’s church, his family, and his own spirituality were thus definitively shaped by strong patterns of deep pietistic Reformed spirituality. It is also important to note that though the earlier phases of Dutch pietism affirmed orthodox Reformed theology and were also nonseparatist in their ecclesiology, by the mid–nineteenth century the Seceder group had become significantly separatist and sectarian in outlook.8

The second major influence on Bavinck’s thought comes from the period of his theological training at the University of Leiden. The Christian Reformed Church had its own theological seminary, the Kampen Theological School, established in 1854. Bavinck, after studying at Kampen for one year (1873–74), indicated his desire to study with the University of Leiden’s theological faculty, a faculty renowned for its aggressively modernist, scientific approach to theology.9 His church community, including his parents, was stunned by this decision, which Bavinck explained as a desire to become acquainted with the modern theology firsthand and to receive a more scientific training than the Theological School is presently able to provide.10 The Leiden experience gave rise to what Bavinck perceived as the tension in his life between his commitment to orthodox theology and spirituality and his desire to understand and appreciate what he could about the modern world, including its worldview and culture. A telling and poignant entry in his personal journal at the beginning of his study period at Leiden (September 23, 1874) indicates his concern about being faithful to the faith he had publicly professed in the Christian Reformed church of Zwolle in March of that same year: Will I remain standing [in the faith]? God grant it.11 Upon completion of his doctoral work at Leiden in 1880, Bavinck candidly acknowledged the spiritual impoverishment that Leiden had cost him: Leiden has benefited me in many ways: I hope always to acknowledge that gratefully. But it has also greatly impoverished me, robbed me, not only of much ballast (for which I am happy), but also of much that I recently, especially when I preach, recognize as vital for my own spiritual life.12

It is thus not unfair to characterize Bavinck as a man between two worlds. One of his contemporaries once described Bavinck as a Secession preacher and a representative of modern culture, concluding: That was a striking characteristic. In that duality is found Bavinck’s significance. That duality is also a reflection of the tension—at times crisis—in Bavinck’s life. In many respects it is a simple matter to be a preacher in the Secession Church, and, in a certain sense, it is also not that difficult to be a modern person. But in no way is it a simple matter to be the one as well as the other.13 However, it is not necessary to rely only on the testimony of others. Bavinck summarizes this tension in his own thought clearly in an essay on the great nineteenth-century liberal Protestant theologian Albrecht Ritschl:

Therefore, whereas salvation in Christ was formerly considered primarily a means to separate man from sin and the world, to prepare him for heavenly blessedness and to cause him to enjoy undisturbed fellowship with God there, Ritschl posits the very opposite relationship: the purpose of salvation is precisely to enable a person, once he is freed from the oppressive feeling of sin and lives in the awareness of being a child of God, to exercise his earthly vocation and fulfill his moral purpose in this world. The antithesis, therefore, is fairly sharp: on the one side, a Christian life that considers the highest goal, now and hereafter, to be the contemplation of God and fellowship with him, and for that reason (always being more or less hostile to the riches of an earthly life) is in danger of falling into monasticism and asceticism, pietism and mysticism; but on the side of Ritschl, a Christian life that considers its highest goal to be the kingdom of God, that is, the moral obligation of mankind, and for that reason (always being more or less adverse to the withdrawal into solitude and quiet communion with God), is in danger of degenerating into a cold Pelagianism and an unfeeling moralism. Personally, I do not yet see any way of combining the two points of view, but I do know that there is much that is excellent in both, and that both contain undeniable truth.14

A certain tension in Bavinck’s thought between the claims of modernity, particularly its this-worldly, scientific orientation, and Reformed pietist orthodoxy’s tendency to stand aloof from modern culture, continues to play a role even in his mature theology expressed in the Reformed Dogmatics. In his eschatology, for example, Bavinck in a highly nuanced way still continues to speak favorably of certain emphases in a Ritschlian this-worldly perspective.15

In Bavinck’s creation theology we see the tension repeatedly in his relentless efforts to understand and, where he finds appropriate, either to affirm, correct, or repudiate modern scientific claims in light of scriptural and Christian teaching.16 Bavinck takes modern philosophy (Kant, Schelling, Hegel), Darwin, and the claims of geological and biological science seriously but never uncritically. His willingness as a theologian to engage modern thought and science seriously is a hallmark of his exemplary work. It goes without saying that though Bavinck’s theological framework remains a valuable guide for contemporary readers, many of the specific scientific issues he addresses in this volume are dated by his own late nineteenth-century context. As Bavinck’s own work illustrates so well, today’s Reformed theologians and scientists learn not by repristination but by fresh address to new and contemporary challenges.

GRACE AND NATURE

It is therefore too simple merely to characterize Bavinck as a man trapped between two apparently incommensurate tugs at his soul, that of otherworldly pietism and this-worldly modernism. His heart and mind sought a trinitarian synthesis of Christianity and culture, a Christian worldview that incorporated what was best and true in both pietism and modernism, while above all honoring the theological and confessional richness of the Reformed tradition dating from Calvin. After commenting on the breakdown of the great medieval synthesis and the need for contemporary Christians to acquiesce in that breakdown, Bavinck expressed his hope for a new and better synthesis: In this situation, the hope is not unfounded that a synthesis is possible between Christianity and culture, however antagonistic they may presently stand over against each other. If God has truly come to us in Christ, and is, in this age too, the Preserver and Ruler of all things, such a synthesis is not only possible but also necessary and shall surely be effected in its own time.17 Bavinck found the vehicle for such an attempted synthesis in the trinitarian worldview of Dutch neo-Calvinism and became, along with neo-Calvinism’s visionary pioneer Abraham Kuyper,18 one of its chief and most respected spokespersons as well as its premier theologian.

Unlike Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper grew up in the National Reformed Church of the Netherlands in a congenially moderate-modernist context. Kuyper’s student years, also at Leiden, confirmed him in his modernist orientation until a series of experiences, especially during his years as a parish minister, brought about a dramatic conversion to Reformed, Calvinist orthodoxy.19 From that time Kuyper became a vigorous opponent of the modern spirit in church and society20—which he characterized by the siren call of the French Revolution, Ni Dieu! Ni maitre!21—seeking every avenue to oppose it with an alternative worldview, or as he called it, the life-system of Calvinism:

From the first, therefore, I have always said to myself, if the battle is to be fought with honor and with a hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle; then it must be felt that in Modernism the vast energy of an all-embracing life-system assails us, then also it must be understood that we have to take our stand in a life-system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power. . . . When thus taken, I found and confessed and I still hold, that this manifestation of the Christian principle is given us in Calvinism. In Calvinism my heart has found rest. From Calvinism have I drawn the inspiration firmly and resolutely to take my stand in the thick of this great conflict of principles.[]22

Kuyper’s aggressive, this-worldly form of Calvinism was rooted in a trinitarian theological vision. The dominating principle of Calvinism, he contended, was not soteriologically, justification by faith, but in the widest sense cosmologically, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible.23

For Kuyper, this fundamental principle of divine sovereignty led to four important derivatory and related doctrines or principles: common grace, antithesis, sphere sovereignty, and the distinction between the church as institute and the church as organism. The doctrine of common grace24 is based on the conviction that prior to and, to a certain extent, independent of the particular sovereignty of divine grace in redemption there is a universal divine sovereignty in creation and providence, restraining the effects of sin and bestowing general gifts on all people, thus making human society and culture possible even among the unredeemed. Cultural life is rooted in creation and common grace and thus has a life of its own apart from the church.

This same insight is expressed more directly via the notion of sphere sovereignty. Kuyper was opposed to all Anabaptist and ascetic Christian versions of world-flight but was also equally opposed to the medieval Roman Catholic synthesis of culture and church. The various spheres of human activity—family, education, business, science, art—do not derive their raison d’être and the shape of their life from redemption or from the church, but from the law of God the Creator. They are thus relatively autonomous—also from the interference of the state—and are directly responsible to God.25 In this regard Kuyper clearly distinguished two different understandings of the church—the church as institute gathered around the Word and sacraments and the church as organism diversely spread out in the manifold vocations of life. It is not explicitly as members of the institutional church but as members of the body of Christ, organized in Christian communal activity (schools, political parties, labor unions, institutions of mercy) that believers live out their earthly vocations. Though aggressively this-worldly, Kuyper was an avowed and articulate opponent of the volkskerk tradition, which tended to merge national sociocultural identity with that of a theocratic church ideal.26

Though Kuyper is best known for his social and political role in Dutch life—as a journalist, founder of a university (The Free University of Amsterdam), founder and long-time leader of a Christian political party (The Antirevolutionary Party), and finally as Dutch prime minister from 1901–5—it must not be forgotten that he was first a church reformer. His first publications and initial political activity were calls for reform of the national church, reforms that would make it a more orthodox Reformed church committed to its confessions and also to its polity.27 Dutch neo-Calvinism contended for the heart and the mind of the Dutch people, and Bavinck’s theology did so as well. Dutch neo-Calvinism was closely allied with the orthodox party in the Dutch Reformed community; however, its vision was not limited to the church but embraced the entire world of thought, the arts, the professions, education, culture, society, and politics. The Reformed Dogmatics is indeed churchly and confessional in tone and character, but it is not sectarian or aloof from the difficult questions of the modern era. Like Kuyper, Bavinck is appreciative of much in the modern world but not uncritically so.

To state this differently: Kuyper’s emphasis on common grace, used polemically to motivate pious, orthodox Dutch Reformed Christians to Christian social, political, and cultural activity, must never be seen in isolation from his equally strong emphasis on the spiritual antithesis. The regenerating work of the Holy Spirit breaks humanity in two and creates, according to Kuyper, two kinds of consciousness, that of the regenerate and the unregenerate; and these two cannot be identical. Furthermore, these two kinds of people will develop two kinds of science. The conflict in the scientific enterprise is not between science and faith but between two scientific systems . . . each having its own faith.28

It is here in this trinitarian, world-affirming, but nonetheless resolutely antithetical Calvinism that Bavinck found the resources to bring some unity to his thought.29 The thoughtful person, he notes, places the doctrine of the Trinity in the very center of the full-orbed life of nature and mankind. . . . The mind of the Christian is not satisfied until every form of existence has been referred to the Triune God and until the confession of the Trinity has received the place of prominence in all our life and thought.30 Repeatedly in his writings Bavinck defines the essence of the Christian religion in a trinitarian, creation-affirming way. A typical formulation: The essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God and recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God.31 Put more simply, the fundamental theme that shapes Bavinck’s entire theology is the trinitarian idea that grace restores nature.32

The evidence for grace restores nature being the fundamental defining and shaping theme of Bavinck’s theology is not hard to find. In an important address on common grace, given in 1888 at the Kampen Theological School, Bavinck sought to impress on his Christian Reformed audience the importance of Christian sociocultural activity. He appealed to the doctrine of creation, insisting that its diversity is not removed by redemption but cleansed. Grace does not remain outside or above or beside nature but rather permeates and wholly renews it. And thus nature, reborn by grace, will be brought to its highest revelation. That situation will again return in which we serve God freely and happily, without compulsion or fear, simply out of love, and in harmony with our true nature. That is the genuine religio naturalis. In other words: Christianity does not introduce a single substantial foreign element into the creation. It creates no new cosmos but rather makes the cosmos new. It restores what was corrupted by sin. It atones the guilty and cures what is sick; the wounded it heals.33

PROLEGOMENA

This entire first volume—one quarter of Bavinck’s full exposition—deals with the introductory matters of definition and method, commonly called theological prolegomena. We have chosen to retain the title Reformed Dogmatics because it underscores Bavinck’s firm commitment to Reformed orthodoxy. Above all this is rooted in a high view of Scripture as divine revelation. Dogmatics, according to Bavinck, is the knowledge that God has revealed in his Word to his church concerning himself and all creatures as they stand in relation to him. Though modern thought tends to devalue all dogma, Bavinck observes that is not a general objection to dogma as such but rather a rejection of certain dogmas and an affirmation of others.

Standing commitedly in a particular tradition of Christian orthodoxy did not hinder Bavinck from a thorough and honest engagement with modern thought. In particular, Bavinck again and again addresses the Kantian claim that God cannot be known and the subsequent effort to maintain the study of theology as a form of human religious experience. This issue was an important practical-existential issue for the nineteenth-century Dutch Reformed church as well as an interesting philosophical and theological question. Bavinck indicates his thorough acquaintance with post-Kantian thought in his discussion of the principia (fundamentals of thought) in chapters 7 and 8 and especially in the detailed discussion of theological method in chapter 15. Yet, the ecclesiastical and academic context in which these questions lived and moved and had their being was the 1876 Law Concerning Higher Education, which effectively turned university theology faculties into departments of religious studies.34 Rather than a confessionally normative dogmatic theology, a neutral, phenomenological approach to religion was mandated by law. The response of the more pietist Reformed community in the Netherlands was to create specific, confessionally oriented theological schools such as the one at Kampen. Though Bavinck taught at the Kampen seminary for some twenty years, his ideal of a scientific theology required a university setting. Thus, when the attempted unification of theological education in the newly formed union church (Gereformeerde Kerk in Nederland; formed in 1892 from a union of the Secession church and Abraham Kuyper’s Doleantie group) failed, Bavinck left Kampen and took a post at Kuyper’s Free University of Amsterdam. The tension in Bavinck’s mind and heart were also played out in his life.

Bavinck follows the traditional organization of orthodox Reformed theology into six loci: doctrine of God, humanity, Christ, salvation, the church, last things. What makes this prolegomena distinctive is the extent to which Bavinck confronts the profound epistemological crisis of post-Enlightenment modernity. Not only the Kantian denial of true god-knowledge but also the varied attempts to construct alternatives that simply accept the divorce of religion and knowledge (theology and science) are dealt with in detail. Bavinck is familiar with such new efforts of the history of religions school (e.g., Troeltsch) and provides able critique. At the same time he also makes use of insights gained from a more phenomenological approach to religion, particularly acknowledging, even insisting, that all religious conviction is born in concrete, historical religions, in the narratives of communities of faith. Though Christianity is the true narrative, it does not have a special, spiritual access to God apart from the mediation of the church and its proclamation, apart from the discipleship exercised by the community of faith.

What may be Bavinck’s most incisive contribution to theological prolegomena is his discussion of certainty in chapter 2 and in chapter 16. Whereas modernity sought certainty only in the confidence of sense perception and that which can be deduced by autonomous reason, Bavinck insists that believing is itself a form of certainty. All religion is based on authority and thus on revelation. Christian dogmatics depends on the truth of Scripture as the revelation of God himself. While we are all, Christians included, influenced by our environment and upbringing, the Christian claim is that we are able to some degree to distance ourselves from our immediate limitations because God has not only addressed us in Scripture but become incarnate among us. As John writes, We have seen . . . (1 John 1:1–3).

Yet this does not lead Bavinck to approve of a strictly biblical theology. In fact, he contends that this is impossible. Even efforts to be purely biblical reflect the ecclesiastical and social environment in which they arise. A proper theological method thus must take Scripture, Christian tradition, and Christian consciousness seriously as resources. Hence, the term dogmatic theology is appropriate since it reflects the normative reality that theology arises from faith and seeks to serve the community of faith.

While theology is rooted in faith and serves the community of faith, not all reflection on faith is theology, properly speaking. Dogmatic theology is a science; it is a disciplined, rigorous, systematic study of the knowledge of God. Strictly speaking not every believer is or needs to be a theologian. The long history of theology parallels the life-history of the church but is not identical with it. In that connection, Bavinck’s lengthy discussion of the history of dogmatics (chaps. 3–6) has few parallels in any single volume published more recently.35 The four chapters (9–12) on revelation are also of special relevance to the debate about revelation, perhaps the single most discussed theological issue of the twentieth century.36 What I am suggesting here is that, though it is a century old, Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics continues to be relevant to many issues still discussed in theology today.

In sum, Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics is biblically and confessionally faithful, pastorally sensitive, challenging, and still relevant. Bavinck’s life and thought reflect a serious effort to be pious, orthodox, and thoroughly contemporary. To pietists fearful of the modern world on the one hand and to critics of orthodoxy skeptical about its continuing relevance on the other, Bavinck’s example suggests a model answer: an engaging trinitarian vision of Christian discipleship in God’s world.

In conclusion, a few words are needed about the editing decisions that govern this translated volume, which is based on the second, expanded edition of the Gereformeerde Dogmatiek.37 The seventeen chapters of this volume correspond to twenty-three in the original (called paragraphs in the Dutch edition), the major difference being the division of Bavinck’s original chapter 5 (with its six subdivisions) into four distinct chapters (chaps. 3–6 of the English edition) and the combination of several shorter chapters into one. This volume also has five parts instead of the original four. Bavinck’s original chapter 5, which was in the first part, is now its own part, The History and Literature of Dogmatics. The headings subdividing each chapter are new. These, along with the chapter synopses, which are also not in the original, have been supplied by the editor. All Bavinck’s original footnotes have been retained and brought up to contemporary bibliographic standards. Additional notes added by the editor are clearly marked. All works from the nineteenth century to the present are noted with full bibliographic information given in the first note of each chapter and with subsequent references abbreviated. Classic works produced prior to the nineteenth century (the church fathers, Aquinas’s Summa, Calvin’s Institutes, post-Reformation Protestant and Catholic works) for which there are often numerous editions are cited only by author, title, and standard notation of sections. More complete information for the original or an accessible edition for each is given in the bibliography appended at the end of this volume. Where English translations of foreign titles were available and could be consulted, they have been used rather than the original. Unless indicated in the note by direct reference to a specific translation, translations of Latin, Greek, German, and French material are those of the translator taken directly from Bavinck’s original text. References in the notes and bibliography that are incomplete or could not be confirmed are marked with an asterisk (*). To facilitate comparison with the Dutch original, this English edition retains the subparagraph numbers (##1–160 in square brackets) used in the second and subsequent Dutch editions. Internal cross-references cite the page number; cross-references to other volumes of the Reformed Dogmatics cite the subparagraph number.

1

THE SCIENCE OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY

The orderly study of the truths of the Christian faith has been described by many different terms. The designator dogmatics has the advantage of anchoring such study in the normative teachings or dogmas of the church. Dogmas are only those truths properly set forth in Scripture as things to be believed. A truth confessed by the church is not a dogma because the church recognizes it but solely because it rests on God’s authority. Still, religious dogma is always a combination of divine authority and churchly confession. Dogmas are truths acknowledged by a particular group. Though the church’s dogmas have authority only if they are truly God’s truths, church teaching is never identical with divine truth itself. At the same time, it is a mistake to devalue most dogma as impermanent aberrations from the pure essence of a nondogmatic gospel, as some modern theologians do. Opposition to dogma is not a general objection to dogma as such but a rejection of specific dogmas judged unacceptable by some. Thus, theology after Kant denies dogmas rooted in a science of God because of the modern dogma that God is unknowable. Dogmas rooted in morality or religious experience are then substituted in their place. However, from the viewpoint of Christian orthodoxy, dogmatics is the knowledge that God has revealed in his Word to his church concerning himself and all creatures as they stand in relation to him. Though objections to this definition in the name of faith often miss the mark, it must never be forgotten that the knowledge of God, which is the true object of dogmatic theology, is only obtained by faith. God cannot be known by us apart from revelation received in faith. Dogmatics seeks nothing other than to be true to the faith-knowledge given in this revelation. Dogmatics is thus not the science of faith or of religion but the science about God. The task of the dogmatician is to think God’s thoughts after him and to trace their unity. This is a task that must be done in the confidence that God has spoken, in humble submission to the church’s teaching tradition, and for communicating the gospel’s message to the world.

The proper place of dogmatics in the larger encyclopedia of theological study is not a matter of great debate. The main issue here has to do with the relation between dogmatic theology and philosophy. Neither the subjection of dogmatics to philosophical presuppositions nor the dualistic separation of confessional theology from the scientific study of religion is acceptable. Such a split fractures the lives of theology professors and pastors alike. Efforts to rescue religious studies from the acids of modernistic philosophy are a favor the church cannot afford to accept. All knowledge is rooted in faith and all faith includes an important element of knowing. The task of dogmatic theology, in the final analysis, is nothing other than a scientific exposition of religious truth grounded in sacred Scripture. Apologetic defense of this truth and ethical applications to Christian conduct both are based in and proceed from divine revelation and faith; they do not ground or shape faith. Dogmatics and ethics are a unity, though they may be treated as distinct disciplines. Dogmatics describes God’s deeds for and in us; ethics describes what renewed human beings now do on the basis of and in the strength of these deeds.

TERMINOLOGY

[1] The term dogmatics is of relatively recent date. In the past numerous other designations were in use. Origen entitled his main dogmatic work On First Principles (Περι Ἀρχων). Theognostus, one of Origen’s successors at the school in Alexandria, chose for his work—since lost—the title Outlines, and Lactantius spoke of The Divine Institutes. Augustine expanded the title of his Little Handbook or Enchiridion with the words On Faith, Hope and Love. John of Damascus published an Exact Treatise on the Orthodox Faith. First surfacing in the work of Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), the term Sentences in the thirteenth century gave way to Summa Theologiae. Melanchthon spoke of Common Places (Loci Communes). The term loci was borrowed from Cicero and served to translate the Greek word τοποι. By τοποι Aristotle meant the general rules of dialectic that were known of themselves and established and could therefore serve as elements of proofs.1 Transferring this theory of the τοποι from dialectics to rhetoric, Cicero used the term for the general rules or places where a rhetorician could find the arguments he needed when treating any given topic. He defined the loci as bases from which arguments are adduced, i.e., reasons which give credence to matters of doubt, and referred to such sources as the idea, the definition, the division, the basic meaning of words and synonyms, and so forth.2 For centuries these topical loci, which made available to public speakers the means by which they could find the necessary material and proofs for their chosen topics, continued to be important in rhetoric. When these sedes argumentorum (debating databases!) bore a general character so that they could serve in relation to all subjects, they were called common loci; by contrast, the name proper loci served to designate the proof texts that could only be applied to a certain subject.

Melanchthon’s loci communes owe their existence to two lines of work he was pursuing in the same period: a series of critical comments on Lombard’s Sentences and a commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In 1520, as a result of this twofold activity, he conceived the plan to write Locos Communes concerning law, sin, grace, sacraments as well as other mysteries. In other words, he sought to summarize and discuss under a number of general concepts—in the manner of rubrics, following the instruction of the rhetoricians—the scriptural material he derived from his study of the Letter to the Romans. These general rubrics or loci he borrowed from Lombard but filled them with content, derived not from scholasticism but from Scripture, specifically from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Melanchthon, therefore, the term loci communes thus did not yet refer to fundamental truths but to the formal rubrics or schemata under which the truths of Scripture could appropriately be subsumed and discussed. Nor did the treatment of these loci aim at any scholarly goal but served only to introduce the unlearned to the knowledge of Holy Scripture. In terms of completeness and organization, the work therefore left much to be desired and was considerably expanded only in a later edition. Because Melanchthon himself characterized his loci communes by the phrase theological outlines and later even spoke of loci praecipui (principal loci), the formal meaning of the name, gradually and unnoticed, passed into a material one, and loci communes became the name for the principal truths of the Christian faith. Accordingly, Spalatin’s German translation of Melanchthon’s work perfectly reproduced the title in terms of content: The main articles and chief points of Holy Scripture in its entirety.3

This new name for the treatment of the truths of the faith, with rare exceptions, gained little acceptance among Roman Catholic theologians. While they use the expression loci, they do not employ it in the sense it had gradually acquired thanks to Melanchthon, but in the sense it had had from the days of Aristotle and Cicero. For them it refers not to the articles of the faith (articuli fidei) but to the principles or sources of theology.4 Melchior Canus’s famous work, which was published in 1563 under the title of Loci Theologici, does not deal with dogmatics itself but with its sources, of which there are ten: Scripture, tradition, pope, councils, church, church fathers, scholastics, reason, philosophy, history. On the other hand, numerous Lutheran and Reformed theologians, like Chemnitz, Hutter, Gerhard, Calovius, Martyr, Musculus, Hyperius, Ursinus, Maccovius, Chamier, and others, did adopt Melanchthon’s term loci communes.

Still, in time, as the need for a more systematic treatment of the truths of faith increasingly made itself felt, the name could not maintain itself. From the beginning of the Reformation, other names had already been in use as well. Zwingli had published dogmatic writings under the title of Commentary on True and False Religion: A Brief and Lucid Exposition of the Christian Faith.5 Calvin preferred the name Institutes of the Christian Religion.6 And later theologians of the Lutheran and Reformed churches returned to the ancient name of theologia. To distinguish it from other theological disciplines, which gradually increased in number and importance, this name theologia had to be qualified. To that end the adjectives didactic, systematic, theoretical, or positive were added, and since L. Reinhart (Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae, 1659) also that of dogmatic. This description made obvious sense since the truths of the faith had for a long time already been designated dogmata and the separation of dogmatics and ethics begun with the work of Danaeus and Calixtus required a distinct name for each of the two disciplines. Since then the addition dogmatic gained such dominance that, having banished the main term theology, it took over, found acceptance among theologians of various confessional stripes, and could not be ousted by the later names doctrine of the faith, doctrine of salvation, or Christian doctrine.

DOGMA, DOGMATICS, AND THEOLOGY

[2] The word dogma, from Gr. dokein (to be of the opinion), denotes that which is definite, that which has been decided, and is therefore fixed.7 In Scripture (LXX) it is employed to refer to government decrees (Esther 3:9; Dan. 2:13, 6:8; Luke 2:1; Acts 17:7); the statutes of the Old Covenant (Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:14); and the decisions of the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:28; 16:4). In the classic writers it has the meaning of a decision or decree, and in philosophy that of truths established by axiom or by proofs.8 The word in these senses was also adopted in theology. Josephus9 says that from childhood on Jews view the books of the Old Covenant as divinely given dogmata. In the same sense the church fathers speak of the Christian religion or doctrine as the divine dogma, of Christ’s incarnation as the dogma of theology, of the truths of the faith that are authoritative in and for the church as the dogmata of the church, and so forth. The word continues to have the same meaning in the Latin writers, like Vincent of Lerins in his Commonitory10 and among Protestant theologians like Sohnius, Ursinus, Hyperius, Polanus, and others.11

The use of the word dogma teaches us, in the first place, that a wide range of commands, decisions, truths, propositions and rules for living can be denoted by it. Nonetheless, the element that they all have in common is that dogma consistently stands for something that is established and not subject to doubt. Cicero, therefore, correctly characterizes it12 as something stable, fixed, reasoned and that no argument can shake. Still, there is nothing in the word itself that explains why something is a dogma and deserves credence. The authority or ground from which a dogma derives its firmness differs in accordance with the type of dogma it is. Political dogma rests on the authority of the civil government, while philosophical dogmas derive their power from self-evidence or argumentation. By contrast, religious or theological dogmas owe their authority solely to a divine testimony, whether this is perceived, as among pagans, from an oracle, or, among Protestant Christians, from Scripture or, among Roman Catholics, from the magisterium of the church. Some say, incorrectly, that dogma rests on personal authority or coincides with the theological construction of a devout scholar.13 Etymologically and historically there has always been a sharp distinction between δογμα and δοξα, between a doctrine based on a given authority and authoritative for a specific circle and in a specific area on the one hand, and the private opinion of a person, however renowned, on the other. Accordingly, no one would think of labeling, say, the ideas of Swedenborg on the spiritworld as dogmas. Nor is it correct to say, as Lobstein does, that in its historical sense a dogma is nothing other than a conceptually apprehended statement of belief officially formulated by the proper authority. Lobstein specifies this authority as the church in collaboration with the state. Dogma would then be briefly, an obligatory statement of belief drawn up by the infallible church and sanctioned by the absolute power of the state.14 This is incorrect since, in the first place, the authority of the state is not the sole basis on which the so-called political dogmas rest. Even the Roman Catholic Church professes and maintains its dogmas independently of and, if necessary, over against all state authority. Nor, in the second place, does the authority of a dogma rest on a pronouncement and determination of the church, as Schleiermacher and many others after him have taught us.15 Rome can teach this because it attributes infallibility to the church. But the Reformation recognizes no truth other than that which is given on the authority of God in holy Scripture. The Word of God grounds the articles of faith and beyond that no one, not even an angel.16 Dogmas, articles of faith, are only those truths which are properly set forth in Scripture as things to be believed.17 It is only those "propositions [sententiae] which must be believed on account of a mandate from God.18 Among Reformed theologians, therefore, the following proposition returns again and again: the principle into which all theological dogmas are distilled is: God has said it."

In the second place, usage informs us that the concept of dogma contains a social element. From the character of authority that belongs to it, it naturally follows that as such a dogma is recognized in a certain circle. However well-established a truth may be, unless it is recognized, it is nothing more—in the eyes of people outside that circle—than the opinion of some teacher, and therefore a private opinion. The notion of dogma implies that the authority it possesses is able to command recognition and thus to maintain itself. A distinction has to be made, therefore, between dogma as it has to do with itself (quoad se) and dogma as it has to do with us (quoad nos). A given proposition is a dogma in itself, apart from any recognition, if it rests on the authority of God. Nonetheless, it is intended, and has an inherent tendency, to be recognized by us as such. Truth always seeks to be honored as truth and can never be at peace with error and deception. 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. Accordingly, the church’s confession can be called the dogma quoad nos (for us), that is, the truth of God as it has been incorporated in the consciousness of the church and confessed by it in its own language.

This means that the church of Christ therefore has a certain task to fulfill with respect to dogma. To preserve, explain, understand, and defend the truth of God entrusted to her, the church is called to appropriate it mentally, to assimilate it internally, and to profess it in the midst of the world as the truth of God. It is most definitely not the authority of the church that makes a dogma into dogma in a material sense, elevates it beyond all doubt, and enables it to function with authority. The dogmas of the church have, and may have, this status only if and to the degree they are the dogmas of God (δογματα του θεου). The power of the church to lay down dogmas is not sovereign and legislative but ministerial and declarative. Still, this authority has been granted by God to his church, and it is this power that enables and authorizes her to confess the truth of God and to formulate it in speech and writing. In this connection it must also be kept in mind that the dogmas have never been fully incorporated in the church’s creedal statements and ecclesiastically fixed. The life and faith that the church possesses is much richer than what comes to expression in its creedal statements. The church’s confession is far from formulating the entire content of the Christian faith. To begin with, a confession generally comes into being in response to specific historical events and arranges its positive and antithetical content accordingly. Furthermore, a confession does not make clear the inner coherence that exists among the various dogmas nor does it ever fully articulate the truth which God has revealed in his Word. The task of the dogmatician differs therefore from that of the student of the church’s creedal statements. The latter satisfies himself with the status of the dogmatic content of the creeds, but the former has to examine how the dogma arose genetically from Scripture and how, in accordance with that same Scripture, it ought to be expanded and enriched. Therefore, just as wood does not burn because it smokes but smoke nonetheless signals the presence of fire, so a truth confessed by the church is not a dogma because the church recognizes it but solely because it rests on God’s authority.19 Still, having made this point, we must add that the confession of the church supplies us with an excellent—though not infallible—means to find our way amid many and varied errors to the truth of God laid down in his Word.

[3] In the third place, usage teaches us that religious or theological dogma is always a combination of two elements: divine authority and churchly confession. 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. Conversely, in case there is a truth concealed in Scripture that has not yet been assimilated by the church, it may be called a dogma quoad se (as it has to do with itself), though it is not yet a dogma quoad nos (as it has to do with us) and still awaits its future development. Now one of the greatest difficulties inherent in the dogmatician’s task lies in determining the relation between divine truth and the church’s confession. No one claims that content and expression, essence and form, are in complete correspondence and coincide. The dogma that the church confesses and the dogmatician develops is not identical with the absolute truth of God itself. Not even the Roman Catholic Church dares to make that claim. For though it confesses the infallibility of the pope, it makes an essential distinction between papal infallibility and apostolic inspiration; it stands by the matters themselves but not the exact words and therefore does not literally elevate dogma to the level of the Word of God.20 In Catholic theology there is thus room left for the question of how far the truth of God has found fully adequate expression in the church’s dogma. On the basis of Protestant assumptions, however, this is much more the case, for here the guidance of the Holy Spirit promised to the church does not exclude the possibility of human error. On the one hand, there is Hegel who elevated history in general and that of the church and dogma in particular to the level of a necessary, logical unfolding of the absolute idea and claimed that all that is real is therefore rational. But in Hegelian philosophy with its dialectical method, this statement only meant that at any given moment reality was precisely that which it had to be. There was absolutely no implication here that reality coincided with truth. On the contrary, in Hegel’s system truth was forever unattainable, for there was no unchangeable being, only an eternal becoming. All reality was therefore at the same time and in the same sense irrational if it was destined to make way for another reality.

In the development of idealistic philosophy, this revolutionary principle, which was basic to it but lay hidden under the appearance of conservatism, clearly came to the fore. In the field of the history of dogma, this revolutionary principle manifested itself in the teaching that Christian dogma, along with its entire history, was one enormous aberration, one colossal error. Following Ritschl, who regarded the development of Protestantism in complete disagreement with the principle originally advanced by Luther, Harnack in his History of Dogma developed the thought that Christian dogma was a product of the Greek spirit working on the substratum of the gospel. And in general, since Kant distinguished between statutory religion and the religion of reason, Hegel between sight and concept, and Schleiermacher between piety and belief, it is to some extent acknowledged by all that there is in dogma both a permanent and a variable element. In France, Auguste Sabatier in particular attempted to show that Christian dogma is composed of three elements: the piety of the heart, intellectual reflection, and ecclesiastical authority.21 On the components of a dogma and their mutual relationship, there is a wide range of opinion, a subject to which we must return later. Here it is enough to point out that ultimately no one can deny to dogma an invariable, permanent element. People may regard the genuine core of a dogma as being ever so small and sharply restrict the element of truth concealed in it (say, to the religion of the Sermon on the Mount, to the personal faith of Jesus, to the essence of Christianity distilled into a number of abstract generalities, or to religious feeling or religious experience), but one who clings to the truth of religion cannot do without dogma and will always recognize in it an unchanging and permanent element. A religion without dogma, however vague and general it may be, without, say, faith in a divine power, does not exist, and a nondogmatic Christianity, in the strict sense of the word, is an illusion and devoid of meaning.22 Whereas Harnack sends dogma off through the front door, he smuggles it back in through the back door;23 and the very moment that Kaftan says the old dogma has changed, he calls for a new dogma. Similarly, the nondogmatic Christianity of Otto Dreyer has not been rendered free of all doctrine but only of that which the preacher himself finds inconvenient.24 Finally, in the same article in which Groenewegen polemicizes against a dogmatically bound theology, he energetically calls for the restoration of dogmatics in the department of theology. Granted, by this he only means a system of theological constructs fashioned by a devoutly religious philosopher, a scientific exposition, and a defense of the intellectual content of his faith-life. Nevertheless, this does assume that in the faith-life of the individual a transcendent reality, i.e., God, is being manifested. Without faith in the existence, the revelation, and the knowability of God, no religion is possible.25 Opposition to dogma is not resistance to dogma as such, for unbelief has at all times been most dogmatic (Kant), but to certain specific dogmas with which people can no longer agree.

Finally, in the fourth place, the use of the word dogma teaches us that it is sometimes employed in a broader, and then again in a more restricted, sense. Sometimes it denotes the Christian religion as a whole, and St. Basil the Great26 could mean by δογματα (in contrast with the κηρυγματα: the articles of faith drawn from Scripture) the rites and ceremonies of the church. Elsewhere Polanus says that dogma in the broad sense encompasses everything contained in Holy Scripture, not only the doctrines of gospel and law, but all the discourses and sacred stories as well.27 As a rule, however, the word was used in a more restricted sense for the doctrine of gospel and law, for the judgments which have to be believed and obeyed because of a mandate from God. It therefore embraced not only doctrinal but also ethical truth. Later, however, the word was further delimited because the doctrine of the law was distinguished and separated from the doctrine of the gospel. Then only judgments that one must believe and obey because of a mandate from God qualified as dogmata. Proceeding further on this road, Polanus also distinguished between the dogmas and the principles of theology. So dogma came to denote the articles of faith that were based on the Word of God and therefore obligated everyone to faith. Dogmatics, then, is the system of the articles of faith.

THE CONTENT OF THEOLOGY

[4] Still, with all this we have only defined the concept of dogmatics in a formal sense. A definition of dogmatics as the science of dogmas is of little use as long as we do not know the material content of the dogmas. In order now to determine the material concept of dogmatics, we must remember that originally dogmatics was an adjective used to describe the main concept of theology. In earlier times, in keeping with this concept, dogmatics was usually taken to be the doctrine of God, primarily, and of creatures according to the respect in which they are related to God as to their source and end.28 Others, however, objected to making God the main concept of dogmatics and preferred to call its object by another name. Lombard29 followed Augustine who says all doctrine is either of things or of signs, and assigned to theology two areas: things, i.e., God, world, and man; and signs, i.e., sacraments.30 But this incomplete designation was soon abandoned and improved by the commentators. Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure,31 describing the material and content of theology or dogmatics, referred to Christ and his mystical body, the church; Hugo St. Victor,32 the work of reparation. Sometimes Lutheran and Reformed theologians also defined the content of dogmatics in this fashion. Calovius, for example, opposes in the strongest terms the idea that God is the real object of theology. Etymology, he contends, settles nothing here; theology on earth where we do strive for the knowledge of God but do not attain it is something very different from theology in heaven. In his opinion, to make God the object of theology is as wrong as to make a prince instead of the commonwealth the object of the study of politics.33 The real object of theology is man insofar as he is to be brought to salvation, or the religion prescribed by God in his Word.34 Similarly, some Reformed theologians described living for God through Christ, religion, the worship of God, as the content of dogmatics.35 Thus, step by step, the subjective practical notion of theology began increasingly to find acceptance.

This tendency was strongly promoted by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In his critical examination of the human faculty of cognition this philosopher came to the conclusion that the supernatural is unattainable for us human beings, since our capacity for knowledge is bound to its innate forms and therefore limited to the circle of experience. But next to this form of knowing there is room for a faith that, based on moral freedom and under warrant of the categorical imperative, postulates the existence of God, and the soul and its immortality. However, these postulates are not scientific theses capable of rigorous proof but rest on personal, practical motives. Accordingly, believing and knowing are separated in principle, each having its own domain. In the sensuous world, science is possible; with respect to the supersensuous, we have to be satisfied with faith. So in Kant dogma was given the status of a personal conviction of faith grounded in moral motives. On the basis of other considerations, Schleiermacher arrived at a similar conclusion. It is true that he opposed Kant when he defined