Reformed Ethics : Volume 1 (Reformed Ethics)

Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity

Bavinck, Herman, Bolt, John

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781493414444
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethik & Religion

Herman Bavinck's four-volume Reformed Dogmatics is one of the most important theological works of the twentieth century. Leading Bavinck expert John Bolt edited that work, which has received wide acclaim. Now Bolt brings forth a recently discovered manuscript from Bavinck, in print for the first time, which serves as a companion to Reformed Dogmatics. Reformed Ethics mines the moral teachings of the early church and medieval and Puritan spirituality while addressing a variety of topics, offering readers Bavinck's mature reflections on ethical issues. This book is the first of three planned volumes.

Book II

CONVERTED HUMANITY

7
Life in the Spirit

In this chapter, we move from the morality of sinful people who follow the guidance of natural law to those who have been renewed by the Spirit of Christ. This new life is variously described as being “in Christ,” “crucified with Christ,” “new creations,” “children of light,” or simply as “spiritual” rather than “fleshly.”

This is a state of grace over against the law. It is also a state of liberty, having been set free from the slavery to sin. Above all, it is the state of life as opposed to death in sin. Life is more than being: it is an activity, a life-force, whether that be vegetative life, the sensory life of animals, or the rational life of human beings. Most importantly, life is the promise of the gospel; a spiritual life differs from vegetative, sensory, or rational life essentially, qualitatively. It has its own distinctive life-principle.

Only the Triune God has life in himself; all creaturely life is derived from and dependent upon God. While the drive for self-preservation characterizes all vegetative and sentient life, the spiritual life is characterized by love for God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Its fundamental principle is not found within the natural life but first arises through denial, self-crucifixion, renunciation, and loss of our soul. Love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and fruit of the Spirit, gives stature and form to the spiritual life.

Because love for God is its foundation, spiritual life itself consists of fellowship with God, with Christ, with fellow believers. Spiritual life is a communal life; it cannot exist on its own, for then it languishes and dies. This threefold communion is fellowship with the Father, fellowship with Christ, and fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The believer experiences the life of God himself: from the Father through the Son in the Spirit and, conversely, in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

This spiritual life is a hidden life, invisible, not yet embodied. Scripture speaks about our “inner being,” our heart, our mind, and our spirit. The heart is the seat of the spiritual life; our rationality, emotions/feeling, and will are all rooted in our heart. It is where “God’s love has been poured . . . through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

This internal, hidden life is not yet complete; we live by faith, in the state of grace, which is not yet the state of glory. This is not to deny that the spiritual life spreads itself to some degree across the entire soul. Believers now want to do the good. The new life in Christ is life indeed, eternal life, conscious life of a renewed mind, a free life, and a blessed life.

The spiritual life has its objective origin in election. Subjectively, even Reformed theology acknowledges preparations, antecedents to conversion, such as hearing the word, going to church, cultivating a sense of sin, hope of pardon, and the like. These acknowledge God’s providential guidance until the Holy Spirit regenerates a person. The “preparations” are part of the general work of God the Holy Spirit; regeneration is particular and irresistible.

Spiritual life follows the pattern of all life and consists of separating, dividing, assimilating—and appropriating to itself. Conversion is a sincere and steadfast renouncing of all sin by a born-again person. Regenerated persons reveal themselves immediately and positively by believing, trusting that God’s testimony is true. To believe is to say “Amen” to God’s Word. Even more, it is trust in the person of Christ.

Some Christians emphasize the knowledge of faith, others the trust of the heart. The former risk dead orthodoxy; the latter, confusing faith with experience and diminishing the importance of Scripture. Head and heart belong together; both are essential.

§17. The Nature of the Spiritual Life

In Book I we considered humanity before conversion—namely, what humanity should be (the image of God), what it is in the state of sin, and what it has retained of the image of God in sin. Now we turn to the beginning and progress of conversion; in other words, the nature, birth, growth, and perfection of the spiritual life and our ignorance of it. Nonetheless, understanding is necessary, especially for shepherds, who must recognize (diagnose) spiritual life, nurture it, and, when it is sick, restore it; they are physicians of the soul, and must therefore know the soul in its “state, its way and its condition.”1

There is a gradual transition between Book I and Book II. Following the light of conscience and law, human beings are able to achieve a moral walk, some civic righteousness. But even with all that, humans remain dead in a spiritual sense. There is, however, a life other than the moral one: a spiritual life.

1. Biblical Terms for the State of the Spiritual Life2

The spiritual life is presented in Holy Scripture with a variety of terms and images. The apostle Paul speaks of himself as a “man in Christ” (2 Cor. 12:2) because God has revealed his Son in him (Gal. 1:16).3 Paul, who has himself “been crucified with Christ,” so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:19–20), prays for the Galatian Christians that Christ might be formed in them (Gal. 4:19).4 He reminds the Corinthians that they are his children, begotten in Christ through the gospel (1 Cor. 4:15), and thus “new creations” (2 Cor. 5:17).5 However, believers who consider themselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) but remain “infants in Christ” cannot be considered “spiritual.”6 Instead, Paul calls them “fleshly” (1 Cor. 3:1).7

For believers such as Paul, “to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21).8 The task of gospel ministry by chosen leaders is to “build up the body of Christ” unto maturity, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children” (Eph. 4:13–14).9 The apostle Peter instructs his readers to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).10 Once again, referring to Timothy as “my child,” Paul encourages him to be “strengthened in the grace of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 2:1).11 Jesus inst...