Johan Herman Bavinck > Quotes

“Augustine realized that, even in an era when the Roman Empire teetered on the brink of collapse, the essence of human existence is that we stand in history and that this history is the revelation of God’s great plan.”
― Johan Herman Bavinck, Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Vision

“The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering; rather, its entire focus is aimed at the unique and powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his kingdom.”
― Johan Herman Bavinck, Between the Beginning and the End: A Radical Kingdom Vision

“We can indeed live as though there is a God or no God, as though there are norms or no norms, but ultimately we will want to know [weten] whether that great as though that we base our lives on can withstand the test of objective judgment. That is no game; it is not a hobby. It is alarming in its inevitability because otherwise, everything, our life itself, is a leap into the abyss. A certain self-denial is found in all philosophical thinking—the self-denial of a person who feels that the worldvision that his life’s practice is built on and that is connected to his nature and character could indeed be wrong. Therein lies honesty, depth, and majesty.”
― Johan Herman Bavinck, Personality and Worldview

“The truth is not a theoretical good that you keep in a chest under many locks. The truth is of practical worth in life. It lifts you above yourself by making plain to you the faults of your own life orientation. ...It shows you the objective reality and does this with compelling power so that we should form our lives according to it. ...It is the truth that the personality grabs onto to pull itself upward.

From that, each worldview that wrestles with an earnest and honest investigation ends with this practical demand: 'If these things are so, direct your life toward them. (p. 37)”
― J.H. Bavinck, Personality and Worldview