The ‘Organic-Perfecting’ Church of Bavinck

Part 3 of The “Organic-Perfecting” Key to Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics

Bavinck’s Organic-Perfecting Doctrine of the Church

Christ excels Adam, heaven excels Eden, the covenant of grace excels the covenant of works, and so the social Image “under one Head” would excel the social spheres of the old world. In this way the church is the everlasting social order, and the most perfect, living reflection of the Trinity in the world.1 At the outset we mentioned that Bavinck heads Volumes 2 through 4 after the economy of the Trinity. Now we come to the Holy Spirit, church, and new creation. If we first look to the end, we see Bavinck’s vision of the perfected organism of the world in general and the image of God in particular.

It makes sense that in the new world there will be a reconciliation of the image in presently alienated dimensions: individual and collective, immaterial and material, sacred and secular, peaceful rest and joyful labor. And this totalizing end of Bavinck’s thought is really what sets his dogmatics apart from other Reformed titans. Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy consider the good of man to be exclusively transcendent.2 This was typified in monasticism, but it comes home to roots in a very different ethics and eschatology. 

At the heart of Bavinck’s doctrine of the new creation, there is a paradox concerning nature and grace. While Paul says that “it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural” (1 Cor. 15:46), Bavinck clarifies what is already evident in wider New Testament eschatology: “the kingdom of God is first planted spiritually in human hearts,” and yet that kingdom “is fully realized only when it is visibly extended over the earth as well.”3 In the old world nature is perfected by grace, yet the new creation does not wait for the old to end on its own terms.

The new invades the old, so that grace’s end grows like a mustard seed toward a genuine and whole new world: spiritual and physical in harmony. Accordingly the transformation of the creation in the end will feature continuity and discontinuity with the old.4 The several New Testament passages that seem to teach a total destruction of the old world5 are in fact only indicating “a vanishing of the world in its present, sin-damaged form.”6 All that was made good in the original is “renewed, re-created, boosted to its highest glory.”7

What does the holistic view of a new earth imply about human activity? Bavinck acknowledges Scripture’s relative silence, but he also distinguishes between “resting from our earthly labors” and “engaging in new activities,” as we are called prophets, priests, and kings, serving him forever.8 Individual personalities, loves, and abilities are sown here and now for harvest there and then.9 All will have one unity in eternal life, but some diversity in gifts and rewards.10 This is not merit. The same grace that gives life also may give capacities and experiences in whatever measure God chooses. It would seem that God is more concerned to manifest the glory of his triune diversity in the many than he is to create eternal uniformity. 

With such an end in mind, how does the Holy Spirit work in the restoration of all things in the present church? If the kingdom is only spiritual in each individual believer now, and the rest awaits the consummation, how can such a grand theme be attributed to either the Spirit in causality or the church in participation? In answering this final question, we must first introduce the imagery that makes Bavinck’s ecclesiology most famous: organism versus institution. Second, we will see how this particular Reformed ecclesiology excels that of Rome. Lastly, we will draw out some of his most salient applications for how the church is the perfection of the image on a social level and how this glorifies the specifically triune God. 

The church is organic and institutional. One of the distinctions for which Bavinck is most notable is that of the church as organism and as institution. Now this does not mean that there are two different entities that may be called “the church,” nor even two kinds of local churches within the universal church: two different philosophies of ministry. Rather, these are two real dimensions of the one church. He also does not mean the same thing as the difference between invisible and visible church. Both of those dimensions themselves display aspects of the institutional and organic.11

The substance of the imagery is this: “the church as a gathering of believers is manifest to us in two ways: in the offices and means of grace (institution), and in a community of faith and life (organism).”12 The two are mutually interdependent, since, “regenerate individuals do not come into being because the Holy Spirit atomistically and without the use of means regenerates people and then joins them together”13 and “the gifts do not cancel out the office but vitalize it and make it fruitful.”14

Nor can we say that Christ is behind the government, but the Spirit behind the gifts, since the Spirit also appointed the officers (Acts 20:28) and Christ also gave gifts (Eph. 4:7-11). 

The practical relevance of the unity of organism and institution should not be missed. Many would see both as necessary, yet one as a kind of momentary crutch to be discarded and the other as the real end. Bavinck spoke of a traditional view that sees the church only becoming visible or real in “the offices and ministries, the Word and sacraments, and in some form of church government.”15

Different traditions will favor various species of such officialism—but the genus is a consequence of seeing the institution as the essential end. On the other hand, there is a popular notion of a kind of “organic church” that casts suspicion on the Sunday “meeting” and its “talk,” and not merely the Roman “smells and bells” but also the wooden shoes and pews of the Reformed. Both are lopsided views. 

How the church understands and employs the gifts is a reflection on whether the institution and organism comprise a true unity. Bavinck speaks of the “missionary church” content in calling people to faith and repentance. As the church succeeds and gains converts, deeper theological reflection “awakens.”16 Many today would articulate the same as a critique of theology. To reflect implies, to them, that the church is no longer “on mission,” as if those gifted in doctrinal reflection and those gifted in evangelism or prayer are somehow competing organs in the body: the one dead and the other living! 

Reformed ecclesiology best represents the church’s organic-perfecting nature. As with the word of God and image of God, so the church of God has a unity that precedes its diversity: “an organism in which the whole is prior to its parts.”17 This is not always historically the case, but it is always the case in a logical sense.18 This unity is spiritual in nature. It flows from the unity of the word to the union of believers and Christ affected by that word believed. Here is the fundamental place of the Spirit in the perfecting of the image of God as a community. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that faith unites the body of Christ to its Head, as “God produces both creation and new creation by his Word and Spirit.”19 So the efficient cause of both the old and the new world is Trinitarian. As stated, the works of the Trinity are one, yet the raising up of the spiritual temple of the church belongs to the diverse economy. The Spirit has one part and Christ another. 

If we said all this in generalities, Rome and the Reformation could agree. But Bavinck’s imagery becomes one more angle in to the sixteenth century controversy. The Reformation could agree that having the church as our mother prepares us for God as our Father, but does so by giving “Scripture priority over the church, and the Word priority over the sacrament.”20 In this way, the church could be nursing mother without competing with Christ for the role of Mediator. Church as institution nurtures the church as organism. 

When it comes to discerning the true organism called “the church,” its origins are known by its end, as a tree is known by its fruit. It is not simply that the canon creates the church, and not the other way around; but the ministry of the word must perfect the body into “the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). In this light, Rome’s doctrine of the “teaching church” does violence not only to the unity of the church, but also the servant role of the Word in perfecting the whole body. Rome attempted to draw an analogy between Incarnation and Church at this point: each having an invisible and visible dimension. But since the sign (flesh) comes to the fore, imparting the grace of the Word and sacraments, the “institution, accordingly, has priority over the organism.”21

The “listening church” is not simply dependent. It is kept infantile. This runs opposite to the church’s task of perfection. So Rome erred not by asserting an institution per se, but by rooting it in hierarchical and historical priority.22 There is a hierarchy and a history; but Christ is its Head and apostolicity is a lineage of teaching and not of men. Reformed ecclesiology tends more toward perfection than the Roman Catholic. Likewise the two humanities and two moralities that Bavinck spoke of with respect to the original image, Rome recapitulates in her ecclesiology. Of course, one has to agree with Bavinck on his assessment of the donum superadditum to fully buy into the division here. Nonetheless he persists: the clergy-laity divide and monastery are nothing but a manifestation of their being two destinies for two different kinds of people: those who are meant for intellectual-spiritual reflection and then the body at large. Often the charge of “Gnosticism” is uninformed. Bavinck’s charge here attempts to be more substantive, as the two classes of Christians in the Roman ideal parallel the pneumatics-somatics division in the Gnostic sect.23

Church as the social image perfected. As the nature of any living system (organism) is to come into its own final form (perfection), it must be asked of Bavinck how we should define the ideal end of the church. First, as to salvation, we should notice how Bavinck wrestles with the biblical paradox that few find the narrow road and that Christ redeems a multitude too great to number.24 His point is not to resolve it by a cheap universalism or annihilationism on one side, or some cold particularism on the other. But it is reasonable to infer one’s disposition to present cultural engagement from one’s warmth of heart toward the ultimate destiny of the human race. 

How does the church practically function in between the old and new worlds? There are many ways to answer this question: some of which Bavinck addresses. The answer that is relevant to the perfection of the social image is this.

Everything good in the world to come is a benefit that comes by Christ. Now Christ uses means.25 We know that these are means of grace, but what are they means toward? Bavinck’s section on sanctification and perseverance is useful in this respect. Contrary to those who today stress the social dimension of the church by minimizing both soteriology and the eternal state, Bavinck points to the perfect world by aiming the power of the Spirit through the remaking of the whole man in the church. Aiming at conformity to Christ and heaven make us better in this life.

It should be clear that, for Bavinck, salvation unto perfection is not the “perfectionism” of Wesley or others. Being justified by faith alone, personal holiness is still necessary; and this holiness is both gift and reward.26 It is earned by Christ yet many “compelling reasons”27 fill the New Testament that appeal to personal motive. What he draws out both here and in his new creation section is the “close connection between sanctification and glorification.”28 But in order to do that, he must be careful to insist that the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone does not leave faith only passive. Faith also has an active dimension. Properly understood, Reformed soteriology activates the new man in church and world. God is perfecting the image through what we do.

When Bavinck moves from the image renewed in the church to the church as the emerging social image, he does some redemptive-historical theology. The Scriptures use organic imagery to speak about the church coming into its own: a person, a plant, and a nation. God is building “one new man in the place of two” (Eph. 2:15), grafting in shoots from a “wild olive tree” into “a cultivated olive tree” (Rom. 11:24), so that there is one “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)—this whole-world assembly begins to form the more ultimate diversity-in-unity that will typify the new world. Everything about the origins of the church shows this. By “origins” we include the whole “two testament” progress of the church from its seminal stage among the Patriarchs and in the wilderness, to its residence in the Temple in the land and in exile, to finally its fulfillment in Christ and indwelling by the Spirit at Pentecost.

Bavinck states that Jesus came not to create something new but “to restore the real, the true קהל‬.” The creation of Israel was a kind of reconstitution of the Image, Canaan being a new Eden, so that the world is being renewed as a first fruit in the church: as a sign and foretaste. Bavinck’s Neo-Calvinism is not such that can be accused of a “kingdom now” or be conflated with the later “theonomy.” The sense in which the church is the seed of the new world is as witness, and yet one that does effect positive engagement and even some degrees of positive change (transformation is a loaded term, and not one that Bavinck seems to use in this context). 

In moving from the economy of the Trinity to the whole of redemptive history, we may notice now how the church occupies a central role in the summation of all things because of the same Trinity.

Bavinck says both that, “The Word is truly the soul of the church … [and that] the church is the soul of the world.”30 Such a concept of “soul” should not be conceived as Hegel used that term about God in the world. Rather the church is more like the living conscience of the nations and the herald of heaven, all at once.

She is not only good for the lost world, but a window to world to come. The church becomes a microcosm of all creation: “The world is one body with many members.”31

In other words, the church as the new world still maintains a positive relation to the old. And this cultural emphasis of Bavinck follows another point of theology proper. “God is sovereign always and everywhere, in nature and grace, in creation and re-creation, in the world and in the church.”32 For Bavinck a consistent view of divine sovereignty exalted Christ as King of both the new world and the old, and consequently did not pit the consummated kingdom against the exalted reign of Christ over all things now. Nonetheless we must distinguish between the kingship of power and kingship of grace, the one by which Christ governs all of the affairs of the world, and the other “by his word and Spirit he gathers and governs his own and protects and keeps them in the redemption acquired.”33

For the Christian’s stance to the present culture, there is either world-conformity or world-flight. We could put it in Kuyperian terms and say that the church goes into all the culture with the antithesis, so that grace restores all of nature even in the present. This can be general restoration without being total, and without compromising the unique mandate of the gospel. But the reader of Bavinck who goes into the Reformed Dogmatics looking to trace out more systematic lines from starting points gained in Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism or some other Neo-Calvinist primer may be disappointed. One must wait to open up the Reformed Ethics for all of that.

Concluding Summary

What we have seen is a consistency among doctrines. A more holistic view of man will demand a more holistic view of sin and salvation. Because man has a Godward, internal, and external dimension, the problem of sin will be legal, psychological, and moral. Reformed theology has often emphasized the vertical reconciliation of the individual and God at the expense of the other two dimensions. Bavinck shows us a way to take all three without diminishing the traditional Reformed soteriology. 

For anyone who thinks that philosophy does not affect theology, Bavinck’s profound analysis of the post-Kantian landscape is a valuable corrective. As one instance, the Kantian insistence that God can only be known by us in a moral (not metaphysical) sense, naturally fits with the insistence that God can only be united to humanity in a moral (not metaphysical) sense. So the restriction on metaphysical theology leads to a consistent restriction on metaphysical Christology. Thus it is no coincidence that antipathy for classical theism tends to go hand in hand with a distaste for the Chalcedonian definition.

Bavinck’s call to return to the metaphysical sense of theology was a call to get behind and beyond Kant. He would not allow for any fideistic assent to the doctrines of the Trinity or the Hypostatic Union that is “just so,” but that could dispense with logical coherence. Of these two great mysteries he remarked that they are “philosophically justified as well.”34 Getting behind Kant, I would argue, absolutely requires the objective natural theology that Bavinck’s “redeemed natural theology” leaves behind. So Bavinck cannot take one all the way to that summit in my judgment.

Infused throughout this work is Bavinck’s conviction that God creates all things (old and new creation) by his word. This is all possible because the Trinitarian economy is what it is: eternal generation in particular. Christ the word is the informing image, especially for human beings and their social interaction. 

If I hardly treated Bavinck’s view of sin, suffering, covenant, law, redemption, ethics, the theosis doctrine, it is not because these are irrelevant to the question, but only because we must set our limits somewhere. 

___________________

1. RD, II:578

2. RD, IV:721

3. RD, IV:715; cf. 718

4. RD, IV:716

5. Matthew 5:18, 24:35, 1 Corinthians 7:31, Hebrews 1:11-12, 2 Peter 3:10, 1 John 2:17, Revelation 21:1

6. RD, IV:717

7. RD, IV:720

8. RD, IV:727

9. Bavinck cites Matthew 24:47, 25:21-26; 1 Corinthians 15:42; 2 Corinthians 9:6; Galatians 6:7-9; Revelation 2:7, 3:12, 14:13, 20:15, 21:12, 14, 27; and Isaiah 62:2, 65:15 to support the various dimensions of this idea.

10. RD, IV:728

11. RD, IV:304-05

12. RD, IV:330

13. RD, IV:331

14. RD, IV:332

15. RD, IV:305

16. RD, IV:65

17. RD, IV:301; cf. 332

18. RD, IV:281

19. RD, IV:33

20. RD, IV:55; cf. 331

21. RD, IV:285

22. RD, IV:282

23. RD, IV:443-44

24. RD, IV:723-27

25. RD, IV:443

26. RD, IV:232

27. RD, IV:236

28. RD, IV:236

29. RD, IV:242-44

30. RD, IV:279

31. RD, IV:312

32. RD, II:437

33. RD, IV:371

34. RD, IV:372

35. RD, IV:306