Status Updates From The Wonderful Works of God

Finished his chapter on the Trinity. Excellent and orthodox. He argues that opera ad extra reflects ad intra eternal relations of origin.

"To that order of existence in the divine being the order of the three persons in all divine work corresponds. The Father is he from whom, the Son is he through whom, and the Spirit is he in whom all things are."

"as we study the trinity, we are not dealing with a Doctrine about god, with an abstract concept, or with a scientific proposition about the nature of divinity. We are not dealing with a human construction which we ourselves or which others have put upon the facts, and which we now try to analyze and logically to dismember. Rather in treating of the trinity, we are dealing with God himself."

"He is simple, not composite, holy free of all compounding of spirit and matter, thought and extent, being and properties, reason and will, and light components, and all that he has also is pure truth in life and Light."

"for the love in God is independent, unchangeable, simple, eternal, and omnipresent. It does not depend upon us nor is aroused by us, but flows, free and pure, from the depths of the Divine being.

This is the good stuff right here 🔥

I finally started the Wonderful Works. I read the introduction, preface, and first chapter, and it has proven to me how theologically rich this book will be to read. It’s already evident to me how Bavinck writes with compelling erudition. In the first chapter on “Man’s Highest Good”, he ends the section by stating: “Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God”. What a start!

"The function of the confessions or Creeds is not to push the scriptures into the background, but rather to maintain them and to protect them against individual caprice."

"The confessions do not impede the growth and knowledge but keep it in the right course of development, and they are themselves to be checked and revised against the holy scriptures as the only norm of faith."