Seal of the Free University of Amsterdam. Motto: Auxilium nostrum in nomine Domini (“Our help is in the name of the Lord”)

Herman Bavinck became the professor of theology at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1902. Bavinck’s four-volume Reformed Dogmatics is no stranger to this blog, but I’d never read any of his sermons or speeches before Bruce Pass recently posted a translation of the speech Bavinck gave at the commencement of his professorship in December of 1902. The title of the speech is Godsdienst en Godsgeleerdheid, or as Pass translates it, Religion and Theology. Immediately noteworthy on a first read-through was the following description of the experience of the Christian life:

The pure, the spotless, the reasonable service is this: to present body and soul as a living, holy, and acceptable sacrifice to God. Now, does this mean that it is self-evident that one is by nature so inclined and capable of this and that all of this obtains without serious struggle? To believe in God against the appearance of all things, to hold fast to Him as though seeing what is unseen, to depend on Him with upright faith, certain hope, and ardent love and moreover, to mortify our old nature, to forsake the world, and to walk in a new, godly life – shall that come about through a frame of mind akin to melancholy, through the kindling of the twilight of our souls? Whoever claims this has as little knowledge of God as they do of their own heart. No, because religion is not a relationship, voluntarily entered into and determined in every detail by us, but a service required of us by God. It is a demand placed before us by Him, an obligation laid on us by Him. Therefore, all true religion is a sacrifice, a sacrifice of our whole heart and of our entire soul and of all of our might unto the will of our heavenly Father and because it is a sacrifice, religion is and remains a struggle until the end of our lives. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit; what I will, that I do not do.

But is that all? Should religion be nothing more than command on command, rule upon rule, here a little and there a little? How would we, Christians who stand in the freedom with which Christ has set us free, be able to claim that? Besides, religion was not only that in the days of the Old Testament, when it was confessed with joy that the fear of the Lord is the principle of all wisdom and the pious sang, ‘How I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.’ Above all it is no more that in the days of the New Covenant, in which the spirit of slavery to fear has made way for the Spirit of adoption. Religion is not only obligation; it is also a disposition and desire. It is a matter of the head and the heart, faith and love, idea and affection, theory and praxis, doctrine and life together — a service certainly, but a service of love which never fails.

God did not give us his Word alone, but also His Spirit. The Word is first. All of our thinking and living, all of our ways, must conform to that Word. What wisdom would we have, if we were to reject the Word of the Lord? If we do not turn our face to the law and testimony, our eyes shall never rise to the dawn of knowledge. All self-righteous religion is an abomination to the Lord, but God has conjoined to the Word His Spirit, by whom he enlightens and renews us and gives us a desire to walk according to His commands. Therefore, the Christian religion is not only rectitude of mind but also purity of heart, not only knowledge but also trust, not just an idea of the intellect but also an inclination of the will, not only illumination of the consciousness but also a conversion of one’s being, in a word — a matter of the whole person, of body and soul together. For whoever is in Christ, is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, everything has become new.