I have recently started reading the first volume of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics which covers prolegomena. I really appreciate the doxological moments that have been scattered thus far. Dogmatics isn't a purely academic discipline for Bavinck because of the nature of its subject. Below is a short snippet showing one instance in which that comes into play:
'Specifically, this then is true of theology; in a special sense it is from God and by God, and hence for God as well. But precisely because its final purpose does not lie in any creature, not in practice, or in piety, or in the church, amidst all the [other] sciences it maintains its own character and nature. Truth as such has value. Knowledge as such is a good. To know God in the face of Christ - by faith here on earth, by sight in the hereafter - not only results in blessedness but is as such blessedness and eternal life. It is this knowledge that dogmatics strives for in order that God may see his own image reflected and his own name recorded in the human consciousness' (53-4).
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