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Christological Movements in the 19th Century

Courtesy of the Hultink Family Foundation, the Cántaro Institute is now the new home for the Reformational Digital Library (formerly known as the Reformational Publishing Project). All rights reserved.

Document: Herman Bavinck, “Christological Movements in the Nineteenth Century”. Bibliotheca Sacra, LXVIII (1911), 381-404.

Excerpt: All the developments of the doctrine of Christ which we have described take their start from and move within the limits of the Chalcedonian Symbol. But very many Christians have been unable to find contentment in this formulary. There have been in all ages those who turned off either to the right or to the left, and followed in the tracks of the old Ebionitism or Gnosticism. On the one side there are ranged Arianism, Nestorianism, Socinianism, Deism, Rationalism, etc., and on the other, appear Patripassianism, Sabellianism, Monophysitism, Anabaptism, and Pantheism in all its varied forms. Above all, the idea has become dominant in the more recent theology that the doctrine of the Two Natures, however well adapted it was to the Greek theology and church, has lost for us its whole religious value; that it has hopelessly given way under the criticism of Socinianism and Rationalism, and needs now to be remodeled in an entirely new, religious ethical sense.

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Christological Movements in the Ninteenth Century – H. Bavinck.pdf