Bavinck on History

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83r17h

Puritan Board Freshman
I've come across a curious section in Reformed Dogmatics in which he discusses revelation and history (1:377-380). In this section, he makes it clear that separating revelation and history is problematic. However, he then makes this claim:

The "truths of history," accordingly, are not accidental, least of all the truths of the history of revelation. They are necessary to the degree that without them all of history and all of humankind would fall apart.

I'm a tad skeptical here, because I'm not sure what exactly Bavinck is understanding as "the truths of history." For example, is the fact that I had a bowl of cereal this morning a truth of history? If so, I find it hard to believe that such is necessary, and without it happening or being true, that all of history and all of humankind would fall apart. If my eating cereal this morning is that important, great - but I don't think my ego needs that.

The other way that I could read it is that not all truths of history are necessary, but that there are some which are necessary and some which are accidental. The truth that God has a plan ordering history, that God created, etc, these would be necessary and not accidental truths. My eating cereal would be an accidental one. But here again I wonder, are all truths which are part of the history of revelation necessary in the sense that without one of them history and humankind would fall apart? I find it hard to conceive that if Matthew had omitted one sentence from his Gospel that such would be the case.

Am I missing something, or reading Bavinck wrong here?
 
I've come across a curious section in Reformed Dogmatics in which he discusses revelation and history (1:377-380). In this section, he makes it clear that separating revelation and history is problematic. However, he then makes this claim:



I'm a tad skeptical here, because I'm not sure what exactly Bavinck is understanding as "the truths of history." For example, is the fact that I had a bowl of cereal this morning a truth of history? If so, I find it hard to believe that such is necessary, and without it happening or being true, that all of history and all of humankind would fall apart. If my eating cereal this morning is that important, great - but I don't think my ego needs that.

The other way that I could read it is that not all truths of history are necessary, but that there are some which are necessary and some which are accidental. The truth that God has a plan ordering history, that God created, etc, these would be necessary and not accidental truths. My eating cereal would be an accidental one. But here again I wonder, are all truths which are part of the history of revelation necessary in the sense that without one of them history and humankind would fall apart? I find it hard to conceive that if Matthew had omitted one sentence from his Gospel that such would be the case.

Am I missing something, or reading Bavinck wrong here?

He is responding to Lessing's Ditch. Lessing said the accidental facts of history could not constitute the necessary truths of reason. In other words, so what if Jesus rose from the dead. That's just an accident of history. Big deal.

Bavinck isn't saying that each incident of history is necessary in the metaphysical sense.
 
This makes sense, thanks!

Basically Lessing's Ditch is a secularized retelling of Plato and Parmenides. We tend to think of truth as "universal." Well, facts of history are particular. If they are particular, they aren't universal. Bavinck is pushing back against that line of thinking.
 
Basically Lessing's Ditch is a secularized retelling of Plato and Parmenides. We tend to think of truth as "universal." Well, facts of history are particular. If they are particular, they aren't universal. Bavinck is pushing back against that line of thinking.

So he's saying basically that all truth does not need to be derived from some abstract "reason?" Therefore, it is possible that we can infer truth from historical revelation. That definitely fits, and makes even more sense. It makes his response to Lessing fit as well, since I initially wasn't sure the connection between his quote of Lessing and what he was saying.

I think the word that threw me off was "accidental." The opposite of it here would be intentional - and in that sense no truth of history would be accidental, since history follows God's plan. I could only think of it as accidental vs. essential if I was thinking in terms of metaphysical necessity (which as you helped clarify in #2, that isn't what Bavinck is talking about).
 
So he's saying basically that all truth does not need to be derived from some abstract "reason?" Therefore, it is possible that we can infer truth from historical revelation. That definitely fits, and makes even more sense. It makes his response to Lessing fit as well, since I initially wasn't sure the connection between his quote of Lessing and what he was saying.

I think the word that threw me off was "accidental." The opposite of it here would be intentional - and in that sense no truth of history would be accidental, since history follows God's plan. I could only think of it as accidental vs. essential if I was thinking in terms of metaphysical necessity (which as you helped clarify in #2, that isn't what Bavinck is talking about).

That's part of it. "Accidental" is a sloppy word. Lessing didn't use it and Bavinck shouldn't have. "Contingent" is a better word.

Part of the problem is that by the time of Kant, necessary truths were like 2 + 2 =4. Everything else is contingent, and if contingent, not necessary. Bavinck's point--and common sense and the average person on the street bear it out-- is that isn't a really useful way of looking at the world.
 
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