Written by Cory C. Brock, James Eglinton, and N. Gray Sutanto |
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Bavinck’s claim is that every person must honestly deal with the assumed faith necessary even in the sensory and knowledge processes themselves. Facing this reality leads directly to the necessary relationship between metaphysics and science. One needs faith as a habitus, Bavinck supposed, because it is the means of disciplining reason, lest it fall by way of the pride of life.

Faith in Pursuit of Knowledge
Because faith aims toward knowledge—or, we might state differently, because faith seeks understanding—the emergence of Christian science is not merely a novel response to modernist positivism. Rather, it is a historic Christian practice, and a necessity of life in a fallen world. Without sin, Christian science would be wholly unnecessary. There would be no breach in the consciousness between religion and knowledge apart from the rupture-induced act of denying the word of God in the egocentricity of becoming like God in knowing good and evil. Sin damaged the self to the extent that knowledge of a fact no longer coincides with knowledge of God. For this reason, Herman Bavinck offers both an argument for the necessity of faith in doing science and a narrative of the emergence of Christian science in Christian history.
With regard to the emergence of Christian science in Christian history, Bavinck makes the magisterial claim that the apostles of Christ “planted the banner of truth in that world of unbelief and superstition.” He suggests that in the first century, skepticism and mysticism displaced the former highly ordered orientation toward systematic investigation (here he likely has Aristotle in view). Against that backdrop, in its unparalleled sweep of the Roman Empire, Christianity offered the world a religion of truth. While Christianity proved distinctively attractive because of the grace it offered (alongside its claim of a resurrected Messiah), Bavinck’s account also makes the striking point that Christianity is a religion of grace precisely because it is first a commitment to truth. If the one God is truth, and his revelation in Jesus Christ is the unveiling of the truth, then all God does and says is truth. Christianity seeks not only to unveil truth but to make the first-order claim that God defines all truths, because God is truth and the author of essences. Thus, by the Spirit, “whoever believingly takes hold of this gospel is of the truth, is reborn through the truth, and is sanctified and freed [by it]. They are in the truth and the truth is in them.”
Bavinck’s historical narrative then turns to focus on how this approach to truth broke through a culture of superstition in the “world of the Gentiles.” The patristic fathers proved, as quoted above, that “Christianity was the true philosophy, and Christians were the real philosophers. They knew [wisten] reality in truth, they knew who God was, and now, equipped with this knowledge, they also had a different and better insight into the essence of the world, of nature and history.” Eventually, a positive approach had to be found with respect to the knowledge produced by the schools of the time, one that eschewed both the extreme of Tertullian’s denial of the good of pagan philosophy and the Alexandrian exaltation of pagan philosophy. The temptation of Christians throughout history, Bavinck notes, has always been to one or the other: to separate faith from reason or to synthesize them in a syncretistic manner. It is the age-old tension between “world worship and world flight, culture idolatry and culture contempt, Enlightenment [Aufklärung] and pietism.” Despite this perennial struggle, Bavinck argues, a clear wisdom emerged, which he promotes in Christianity and Science and throughout his wider corpus: neither wholesale rejection nor acceptance of pagan insight.
Bavinck’s own effort to avoid either error is thoroughly Augustinian, reflecting Augustine’s general insight that truth is made known by the coherence of authority and reason within a framework of faith. For “science [wetenschap] can thus teach only a little, and that little only to a few. It does not know the way to the truth, for it does not know Christ, and thus it often leads to dead ends.” Although Bavinck certainly does regard Augustine’s pairing of authority and reason to be at times dualistic, this Augustinian insight—that faith is a “gift of God” necessary for all knowledge, for all science—is valuable to him. Indeed, it leads to a further point regarding the necessity of the emergence of Christian science; namely, the logic of the necessity of faith as it relates to the possibility of knowledge. He explains this in the following remark:
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Peter’s repentance led to his restoration because each of Peter’s three denials (as well as all the rest of his sins) were nailed through Jesus to the cross. The eternal and sinless Word gave Himself as a ransom for Peter’s sins. And for our sins. The only complete triumph over sin comes through Christ our Champion. He alone is the true hero of the ultimate Story. Indeed, in many ways, we are the villains of our own lives, the authors of our own destruction. But Jesus came not to slay us but save us, to rescue and redeem us, to say to the Father and Judge of all the earth: “Take me instead.”

And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.” And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed. And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.” And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.
Mark 14:66-72 ESV

Through the Bible, we find over and over again that even the greatest heroes of the faith were deeply sinful. Noah got drunk after being preserve with his family upon the ark. Abraham let Sarah be taken as a concubine twice in order to save himself, not to mention the whole incident with Hagar. Jacob’s name sounds like deceiver in Hebrew, and he lived up to that name. Moses was a murderer. Aaron shaped the golden calf for the Israelites. Samson was as weak for women as he was physically strong. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon was an apostate. The same is true of the New Testament as well. In our present passage, we read of Peter’s lowest moment. J. C. Ryle sets what ought to be our chief lesson from these verses:
These things are written to show the church of Christ what human nature is, even in the best of men. They are intended to teach us that, even after conversion and renewal of the Holy Ghost, believers are compassed with infirmity and liable to fall. They are meant to impress upon us the immense importance of daily watchfulness, prayerfulness, and humility, so long as we are in the body. ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.’[1]
At A Distance & At A Fire // Verses 54
The opening words of our text, And as Peter was below in the courtyard, ought to take us back to verse 54, which said: “And Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire.”
As we noted last week, Peter ceased running from Jesus’ arrest at some point and decided to follow the crowd, though he did so at a distance so that he would not be noticed. However, when he got into the courtyard, he sat beside the guards in order to warm himself at the fire. This is significant because the fire would have certainly illuminated his face, which certainly leads to his recognition. I think Ryle is right to say:
There was no wisdom in this act. Having once forsaken his Master and fled, he ought to have remembered his own weakness, and not to have ventured into danger again. It was an act of rashness and presumption. It brought on him fresh trials of faith, for which he was unprepared. It threw him into bad company, where he was not likely to get good but harm. It paved the way for his last and greatest transgression,–his thrice-repeated denial of his Master.[2]
Furthermore, his risk of warming himself by the fire is similar to his inability stay awake in prayer at Gethsemane. His actions were being governed by his comfort. Jesus was standing boldly before the scorn of rulers, while Peter could not stand the cold. How like us! Indeed, how often do we set ourselves up to sin by our desire to be comfortable? David’s decision not to ride with his armies into battle paved the way for his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah. In this life, we will face plenty of unavoidable temptations; thus, let us take care that we do not add to that number temptations that we have invited by our own actions.
The First Denial // Verses 66-68
Returning to our text, we read:
And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him, and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.”
Perhaps we would give Peter more credit if his denials of Jesus came after a guard threatened him with a sword. But that is not what happened. Although Peter sat down with the guards, they apparently did not recognize him or simply did not pay attention to him. Yet this servant girl did, and under her questioning, Peter collapsed. Although he first affirmed Jesus as the Christ, although he alone of the disciples walked on the water out to Jesus, although he was one of the three to see Jesus transfigured upon the mountain, and although he cut a man’s ear off defending Jesus, here Peter could not withstand the simple declaration of his identity as a disciple of Jesus from this servant girl.
This again is a pattern throughout Scripture that many who do great things for God fall into sin through what appear to be insignificant temptations. So it was with Noah. The man who had enough faith to survive God’s destruction of all of humanity except for his family was overcome by wine. Samson could not be defeated by any army, yet loving a treacherous woman left him without strength and blind. The kingdom was ripped away from Saul because he did not fully obey God’s commands but thought that he knew better how to secure God’s favor. Likewise, we should not neglect the danger of respectable sins (as Jerry Bridges calls them), that is, sins like unthankfulness, discontentment, impatience, covetousness, etc. These “little sins” are just as damning as the “bigger” ones.
When looking at Peter’s response, we should first note how irrational sin makes us. In his effort to disassociate himself from Christ, Peter does not merely deny being one of Jesus’ disciples; he denies even knowing who Jesus is. If the girl had any doubts, such denial would have certainly cleared them up, just not the way that Peter intended. After all, remember that the religious leaders could not arrest Jesus while He was publicly teaching each day in the temple because they feared His popularity with the people. Surely everyone in Jerusalem had heard of Jesus, so for Peter to make such a statement was entirely unbelievable.
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Whilst we still sin and thus evidently are still sinners, we are more fundamentally holy and righteous in the sight of God, children adopted into Jesus’ sonship, indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit…When we remember and recall that is who we truly are now, I suspect we will be encouraged into living in line with what we are rather than being harangued into avoiding living in line with what we once were.

I wrote the other day (or, rather, re-posted) an article about not being afraid to repeat ourselves. The reason for the need to repeat ourselves—other than that people often haven’t heard us the first time—is that we are so prone to forget. We have been going through Deuteronomy recently and a repeated theme is the need to repeat the covenant because Israel are liable to forget it otherwise. It is a point made again and again—Deuteronomy has no problem repeating itself!
The key to not forgetting is to keep repeating. That is why Israel were told to keep reminding each other of the basic covenant stipulations, particularly the Shema. The most important fact about Israel was that Yahweh was their God and they were his people. This is the truth they were to keep repeating—when they get up and go to bed, in the house and out the house, in the city and out the city, with your family, friends and strangers—remember that you worship Yahweh alone. He is your God and you are his people.
The reason for landing on that so hard, and repeating it ad nauseam, is because Israel will ultimately act in line with what they are. If they remember they belong to God alone and they are his special covenant people, they are more likely to act as though they belong to God and are his covenant people. Knowing who they really are leads to acting like what they really are. Functioning as God’s covenant people was not about trying harder so much as remembering who they already are.
The same principle holds for God’s people today. The key to the Christian life is not trying harder to be better. It is fundamentally about remembering who we are in Christ. We worship God alone and we are his people. We are united to Christ and all that is his now belongs to us by faith.
More often than not, however, people in my tradition—theologically and soteriologically reformed people—land hard on something else. We tend to emphasise that we are sinners. And, of course, we are sinners by nature. The Bible is clear that all people are dead in their trespasses and sins. It is only in and through the person of Jesus Christ we can be forgiven for those sins. When we come to trust in Jesus—as Luther helpfully put it—we are simultaneously justified and yet sinners. Our sin is not eliminated in reality even if it is truly and properly forgiven, making us justified in God’s sight. And so we continue to hear an awful lot about sin.
But as I said, the Christian life is fundamentally about remembering who we are. Whilst we are still sinners, inasmuch as we still sin, when we have put our trust in Jesus that is no longer our core identity. Our fundamental identity is now our righteous standing in Christ. Let’s put it this way: stood before the throne of God, what is going to be the essential assessment of our lives? That we were sinners? Or, that we are united to Christ? Surely the latter. The Father, fundamentally, views us as those who are righteous in Christ, not fundamentally as sinners.

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