Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: Trinitarian Harmony: The Foundations Of A Philosophy Of Revelation In Early Nineteenth-Century Dutch Reformed Theology
Author: Daniel J. Ragusa

Trinitarian Harmony: The Foundations Of A Philosophy Of Revelation In Early Nineteenth-Century Dutch Reformed Theology

Daniel J. Ragusa

This study uncovers the theological foundations of a philosophy of revelation in early nineteenth-century Dutch Reformed theology and proposes a refinement by further integrating the Reformed doctrine of the covenant. What is offered is a covenantal philosophy of revelation.

Philosophies of revelation were founded on the idea of what we are calling “trinitarian harmony,” that is, the cosmical unity-in-diversity that is a creaturely reflection of the archetypical intra-trinitarian indwelling or interpenetration of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This idea was first developed within the central European Reformed encyclopedic tradition at the Reformed School in Herborn by Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) and Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld (1605–1655) under the terms “immeatio” and “perichoresis naturalis.” Perichoresis was understood ontologically, not relationally, first of God, then, by way of analogy, of his creation, shaping a metaphysic and corresponding logic that were founded in the Trinity. The idea of “perichoresis naturalis” was directly appropriated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) for the sake of his own encyclopedic endeavors. Through Leibniz it arrived in the Netherlands via the Reformed Romanticist Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), whose work would influence such men as Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–1876), Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), and Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949). The principle of Bilderdijk’s philosophy and worldview was that of harmony founded in the Trinity, which he also spoke of as “Love,” drawing from the Dutch Consolatio tradition. This equipped the myriad-minded Bilderdijk and his students to contend for the necessity of divine revelation over against the autonomous human reason of the Enlightenment in all of life. Parts 1 and 2 will demonstrate this line of continuity that runs from the post-Reformation period into the beginnings of the neo-Calvinist tradition.

Part 3 will propose a covenantal philosophy of revelation that further integrates the covenant idea in terms of its (1) God-established architectural role in divine revelation that maintains it as an organic body, (2) theological rest point in the Trinity that avoids pantheistic tendencies, and (3) contextualization of man’s personality as a covenant personality in which his reason, feeling, and volition are harmonized and redemptive-historically qualified. In this way, the covenant idea enhances all the necessary components of “trinitarian harmony” undergirding a philosophy of revelation.