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Christ and Christianity

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, “Christ and Christianity”. The Biblical Review, I (1916), 214-236.

Excerpt: As has often been remarked, there is between Christianity and all other religions one prominent characteristic and real difference. We can notice this in the minor religions; for, although they recognize a Highest Being called the Great Spirit, the Exalted Father, the Mighty Lord, yet this is generally a dead belief, especially among the common people. All these religions drift in practice into animism and fetichism, into superstition and sorcery. But all the higher religions differentiate themselves from Christianity in one chief point. They without doubt have various noble characteristics, so that they do not stand in exclusive antithesis to Christianity, but afford the missionary many points of contact, and in all these grades of affinity must not be repelled but won and strengthened. Yet they have a distinctive and entirely different character than the Christian religion and indicate this mainly in the place and significance which they assign to their founders.

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Christ and Christianity – H. Bavinck.pdf