Bit's o' Bavinck

I've been reading through Herman Bavinck's four volume "Reformed Dogmatics" with some friends recently and I thought I'd share some of the juicy quotes that I've come across while reading the first volume over the last few weeks. (For those of you who may not be familiar with Bavinck here is a helpful introduction to the man and his work.)

"Among Reformed theologians, therefore, the following proposition returns again and again: "the principle into which all theological dogmas are distilled is: God has said it."" - pg. 30

"To preserve, explain, understand, and defend the truth of God entrusted to her, the church is called to appropriate it mentally, to assimilate it internally, and to profess it in the midst of the world as the truth of God." - pg. 31

"Just as wood does not burn because it smokes but smoke nonetheless signals the presence of fire, so truth confessed by the church is not a dogma because the church recognizes it but solely because it rests on God's authority." - pg. 31

"A religion without dogma, however vague and general it may be, without, say, faith in a divine power, does not exist, and a non-dogmatic Christianity, in the strict sense of the word, is an illusion and devoid of meaning." - pg. 33

"A choice has to be made: either there is room in science for metaphysics and then positivism is in principle false, or positivism is the true view of science and metaphysics must be radically banished from its entire domain." - pg. 37

"The scholar can never be separated from the human being. And therefore it is much better to see to it that the scientific investigator can be as much as possible a normal human being, that he not bring false presuppositions into his work but be a man of God completely equipped for every good work." - pg. 43

"The imperative task of the dogmatician is to think God's thoughts after him and to trace their unity... Accordingly, he does not come to God's revelation with a ready-made system in order, as best he can, to force its content into it. On the contrary, even in his system a theologian's sole responsibility is to think God's thoughts after him and to reproduce the unity that is objectively present in the thoughts of God and has been recorded for the eye of faith in Scripture." - pg. 44

"The individual believer who puts his mind to the pursuit of dogmatic studies will only produce lasting benefit from his labors if he does not isolate himself, either in the past or from his surroundings, but instead takes his place both historically and contemporarily in the full communion of the saints." - pg. 46