The Certainty of Theological Knowledge 4: An Assessment of the Three Proposed Sources

Bavinck affirms the three possible sources for dogmatics and thereby for theological certainty. These are the “Scripture, the church, and the Christian consciousness” (78). Each of them has its proper place. However, in the search for theological certainty, history shows the crossing of boundaries laid on them. The Reformation is to be commended for its return to the priority of the “Holy Scripture and, along with the ancient Christian church, acknowledged it as the sole foundation of theology” (ibid.). Rome on the other hand, elevated the tradition of the church “to a level above Scripture, while mystics and rationalists alike draw the content of dogmatics from the religious subject” (ibid.). Bavinck laments about the attitude of numerous people towards authority in religion. He observed in his time that religious authority “has totally faded from view” and had been replaced by another kind of authority rooted in “subjective religion,” which made “the religious consciousness (conscience, feeling, reason, or whatever one wants to call it)” to be “the source and standard of religious ideas” (ibid.). Bavinck points out that “since Schleiermacher the whole of theology has changed, among orthodox as well as modern theologians, into a theology of consciousness” (ibid.). Bavinck names numerous theologians who uphold the priority of religious consciousness. For instance, he claims that theologians like Scholten, Schweizer, Biedermann, and Lipsius though working still “on the basis of ecclesiastical formulations but the final outcome is their personal faith” (ibid). He also cites thinkers like Martensen, Dorner, Hofmann, Philippi, and Frank who took “their point of departure” in theological formulation “in the consciousness of the believer” (79). Bavinck also quotes Schian who argues “that dogmatics had to take much greater account of human individuality for every dogmatician is subjective and can only articulate his own faith” (ibid.).

Response to the place of religious consciousness in theological formulation varies. One response is negation and sees nothing in it but chaos. Bavinck mentions Doedes as one who expressed this sentiment in the latter’s Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology. Doedes elaborated “the boundless confusion prevalent in dogmatics in light of its personal character” (ibid.). Bavinck response to the role of religious consciousness in theological formulation is one of both affirmation and negation. He accepts the fact that theological formulation is really personal. He says that “it bears as in the case of all scholarship the stamp of their authors” and it is foolish to refuse the fact that a theologian can never break away from the influence of his individuality (ibid). On the other hand, his negation centers on his emphasis about the distinction between individual influence and the freedom from all objective foundation. He expressed the danger that would result from the failure of recognizing this distinction by saying: 

The acceptance of individual influence in dogmatics is entirely different from the notion that the dogmatician is free from all objective ties. Like every science, dogmatics is bound to its object and has its own source and norm. It is true that all dogmaticians will view and reproduce that object in their own way and their own language. However, if they look at and describe the same object, personal differences will contribute to revealing the richness of thought inherent in dogmatics. The personal character of dogmatics is not equivalent with the view that the content of faith does not matter. It is the will of God that we should love him also with the mind and think of him in a manner worthy of him. To that end he gave his revelation, the revelation to which dogmatics is absolutely bound, just every other science is bound to the object it studies. If dogmatics should cease to recognize such a revelation, then what is left, . . . is no more than the subjective and hence individual knowledge . . . But that would also be the end of dogmatics and of the Christian faith (79-80).

It is therefore indefensible to deny the existence of the objective aspect of revelation and proceeds to religious consciousness as its replacement. If such case is granted, it is not only that claims of Christianity are baseless but Doedes’ analysis of the endless chaos in theology is correct. Consciousness theology can never replace objective revelation in providing theological certainty for its nature contradicts a sound theory of knowledge. Again, Bavink helps us to see the impotence of consciousness theology in attempting this impossible task. Critiquing consciousness theology, Bavinck states:

Consciousness theology, which rejects Scripture and confession as sources of knowledge and seeks to derive all religious truth from the subject, is first of all in conflict with a sound theory of knowledge. We are products of our environment also in the area of religion. We receive our religious ideas and impressions from those who raise and nurture us, and we remain at all times bound to the circle in which we live. . . . Just as physically we are bound to nature and must receive food and drink, shelter and clothing from it, so psychically – in the arts, sciences, religion and morality – we are dependent on the world outside of us. Feeling is specially unfit to serve as the epistemic source of religious truth, for feeling is never a prior thing but always something, which follows later. Feeling only reacts to what strikes it and then yields a sensation of that which is pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or disagreeable” (80).