The Wonderful Works of God

by Herman Bavinck

110 years after its original publication, The Wonderful Works of God remains one of the finest single-volume systematic theologies ever written. Adapting the magisterial systematic theology found in his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics, this is perhaps Bavinck’s most eminently practical work – a single, accessible volume for the college classroom and the family bookshelf. Previously published in America as Our Reasonable Faith, this book has had a deep and lasting influence on the growth and development of Reformed theology. It is the publisher’s hope that in its new form, this book continues to astonish readers with the wonderful works of God, and provide a deeper knowledge of their triune God.

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Hardcover, 695 pages

Published December 2019 by Westminster Seminary Press (first published January 1st 1956)

tags: theology, christianity, religion, nonfiction, christian

Book Quotes

― Herman Bavinck

“Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.”

― Herman Bavinck

“The Gospel is sheer good tidings, not demand but promise, not duty but gift. But in order that as promise and gift it may be realized in us, it takes on the character of moral admonishment in accordance with our nature. It does not want to force us, but it wants nothing other than that we freely and willingly accept in faith what God wants to give us. The will of God realizes itself in no other way than through our reason and will. That is why it is rightly said that a person, by the grace He receives, himself believes and himself turns from sin to God.”

― Herman Bavinck

topics: Election, Grace

“God makes everything beautiful in His time, He makes everything happen at the right moment, at the moment He has fixed for it, so that history in its entirety and in its parts corresponds to the counsel of God and exhibits the glory of that counsel.”

― Herman Bavinck

“God’s will is the will of the Creator of heaven and earth, who cannot repudiate his own work in creation or providence, and who cannot treat the human being he has created as though it were a stock or stone. It is the will of a merciful and kind Father, who never forces things with brute violence, but successfully counters all our resistance by the spiritual might of love. The will of God realizes itself in no other way than through our reason and our will. That is why it is rightly said that a person, by the grace he receives, himself believes and himself terms from sin to God.”

― Herman Bavinck

“The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him. In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8). Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.”

― Herman Bavinck

“Race instinct, sense of nationality, enmity, and hatred, these are divisive forces between peoples. This is an astonishing punishment and a terrible judgment, and cannot be undone by any cosmopolitanism or leagues of peace, by any 'universal' language, nor by any world-state or international culture. If ever there is to be unity among mankind again it will not be achieved by any external, mechanical rallying around some tower of Babel or other, but by a development from within, a gathering under one and the same Head (Eph 1:10), by the peacemaking creation of all peoples into a new man (Eph 2:15), by regeneration and renewal through the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:15), and by the walking of all people in one and the same light (REv 21:24) The unity of mankind which can only be restored by an internal operation, beginning within and working out, is, therefore, a unity which in the internal operation of that first confusion of tongues was basically disturbed. The spurious unity was radically upset in order that room might be made for the true unity. The world-state was shattered in order that the Kingdom of God would come into existence on earth.”

― Herman Bavinck

“In Christianity the heavens do open, and God descends to the earth. In the other religions it is man whom we always see at work, trying by the achievement of knowledge, by keeping all kinds of rules, or by withdrawal from the world into the secrecy of his own inner life to obtain redemption from evil and communion with God. In the Christian religion the work of men is nothing, and it is God Himself who acts, intervenes in history, opens the way of redemption in Christ and by the power of His grace brings man into that redemption and causes him to walk in it.”

― Herman Bavinck

“All men are really seeking after God... but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15)... They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him... In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of the moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature.”

― Herman Bavinck

topics: Christ, Christianity, God, Meaning Of Life, Seeker, Seeking

Herman Bavinck

Born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen, Drenthe, Holland, Herman Bavinck was the son of the Reverend Jan Bavinck, a leading figure in the secession from the State Church of the Netherlands in 1834. After theological study in Kampen, and at the University of Leiden, he graduated in 1880, and served as the minister of the congregation at Franeker, Friesland, for a year. According to his biographers, large crowds gathered to hear his outstanding exposition of the Scriptures.

In 1882, he was appointed a Professor of theology at Kampen, and taught there from 1883 until his appointment, in 1902, to the chair of systematic Theology in the Free University of Amsterdam, where he succeeded the great Abraham Kuyper, then recently appointed Prime Minister of the Netherlands. In this capacity -- an appointment he had twice before declined -- Bavinck served until his death in 1921.

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