#Bavinck2022 Chapter One: Man's Highest Good

#Bavinck2022 Chapter 1: Man's Highest Good

If you still haven’t purchased the book, you can find it for $28 at this link. The Westminster Bookstore has graciously provided a study guide at this link. Now let’s move into the beginning of Bavinck’s wonderful work, The Wonderful Works of God chapter one: Man’s Highest Good.

Chapter 1: Man’s Highest Good

Systematic theology books like this one sometimes begin with a doctrine of Scripture or a doctrine of revelation, how God speaks to us. We’ll get there soon enough, but Bavinck begins with the ultimate end in mind: that God, and God alone is man’s highest good. Man is unique in all of creation in that he is made in the divine image and he has the ability to look “up” in a spiritual sense. It is God alone, and not just any God, but the triune God of Scripture that will calm our restless hearts, anything less will fail to satisfy.

It doesn’t take Bavinck long to use an expression that most of us probably weren’t very familiar with: desiderium aeternitatis on page 3. This essentially means “desire of eternity,” a longing that resides in each man’s heart, unable to be satisfied by this world. Don’t be intimidated by Latin phrases when you come across them in Bavinck’s writing, I will either include them in the chapter preview or their meaning is just a Google search away. 

Later in this chapter, Bavinck distinguishes between God as man’s highest good and some other things that are still good but not on God’s level. Science, art, culture, and serving others are all good things to be pursued, but they cannot satisfy the restlessness of man’s heart. 

 Man is a great contradiction. He yearns for the presence of God, and simultaneously in his fallen nature, he is repelled by God. Bavinck puts it succinctly at the end of the chapter: “Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.” (7)

So why start his 500+ page systematic theology on the topic of God as man’s highest good? Bavinck doesn’t give an answer for that question in this chapter, but if I may, I’d like to give a short apology for it. Systematic theology is good, very good even, but it is not man’s highest good. Just like with science, art, and other good things, our study of systematic theology can functionally become our highest good in life. God is man’s highest good, so let's be people that read great works of systematic theology with the end of knowing God rather than simply increasing our knowledge. Make reading this book over the next year an act of worship!