Perhaps you’re like me, with a big stack of books over in the corner of the reading room, that you’re going to get to one of these days. For me, they include books on economics, business and theology. One four volume set that I really want to read is Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. I bought the set a few years ago, but the idea of reading a four-volume set, with all the other things in my life, is…daunting. I have used it as a resource occasionally when studying specific theological issues, but as for the detailed reading (and it is not light reading) that has to wait. Yet I recently found out the he had made a much condensed version for the general public (contrasted with the more scholarly set in Reformed Dogmatics) called The Wonderful Works of God. In this book, Bavinck intended the work to be a “handbook on Reformed theology.” So this morning I started down the journey to at least get this one done. This will still undoubtedly take me many months to complete, as the subject is one that demands, as the introduction states, that you “read this book slowly.”

One of the reasons to share this with you today is that I read a particularly interesting longer quote from Bavinck in the introduction to the 1955 printing. Reformed thinking usually features more of a focus on cultural engagement, and Bavinck’s quote is one that I think Bereans should embrace:

Indeed the kingdom of heaven is not of this world. But it does demand that everything in this world serve it. It is exclusive and jealous, and it will indulge no independent or neutral kingdom of the world along side itself. Naturally , it would be much easier to leave this age to its own ways, and to seek our strength in quiet withdrawal. No such rest, however, is permitted to us here. Because every creature is good*, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving, since all things are sanctified by the word of God and prayer, therefore the rejection of any creature were ingratitude to God, a misjudgment or under-evaluation of His goodness and gifts. Our warfare may be conducted against sin alone. No matter how complicated the relationships may be, therefore, in which the confessors of Christ are placed at this time, no matter how serious, difficult, and virtually insurmountable the social, polical, and especially the scientific problems may be, it were faithlessness and weakness in us proudly to withdraw from the struggle, perhaps even under the guise of Christian motivation, and to reject the culture of this age as demonic.

This is why here at BATG we engage in the battle for ideas. It is not to simply to criticize the dark, although we certainly do that. Our first and most important engagement with culture is to identify with Christ, to say to the world that there is a greater King, and we acknowledge that sovereign above all other sovereigns. To declare Christ as Lord and Savior is the most profound political statement. That is not why we make that statement, but make no mistake, it is a political statement. But beyond that, we are charged with engaging culture, not only with the command in Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”,

but also with the Great Commission:

¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

For what does it mean to disciple the nations if not for broader renewal, as Trevin Wax argues here and here. While of course the Great Commission begins with individuals being baptized into Christ’s church, but as the leaven of the Kingdom of God spreads with more believers in a culture, how can it not lead to broader renewal? Which is precisely why believers must engage with all ideas, as Paul commands us in 2 Cor 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Of course this age is demonic. Every age is. Our task is to engage as lights in the culture, in every aspect of our life. We begin by daily renewing our mind in His Word. We corporately gather and worship with others. And we pray. But we can also benefit from great Christian thinking that has gone before us, such as Bavinck’s work. This then necessarily leads to our task to disciple the nations, to include engaging the ideas of this world and testing them against scripture, rejecting what is false and holding fast to what is good.

Herman Bavinck followed Abraham Kuyper as the Chair of Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam, so I think we can conclude with Kuyper’s famous quote: There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!”. That of course includes all our politics, our economics, our foreign affairs. In our one small part of engaging with ideas at BATG, we are trying to extend Christian thinking into the affairs of this world. We will undoubtedly fail from time to time. But as Bavinck says, to reject to engage is not an option.

* You certainly don’t need to agree with everything in this quote (as it stands alone) to agree with the main message. For example, I would seriously question whether every creature is good, but Bavinck is quite clear in his exposition of total depravity in Vol 3 of the Dogmatics, so you can be sure he meant this more in the sense that every creature is an image bearer, and in common grace we see that every image bearer is capable of doing good for all humanity. Further, we recognize as both Paul (and Bavinck here) that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.