This article introduces two recently published manuscripts of lectures by Herman Bavinck from 1891 about “The Certainty of Faith” on which his later booklet The Certainty of Faith (De zekerheid des geloofs, 1901) is based. A comparison of the two manuscripts reveals Bavinck’s struggle to articulate the foundation of the certainty of faith. Furthermore, compared with De zekerheid des geloofs, Bavinck’s 1891 manuscripts reveal his early reliance on “ethical theology” as he emphasizes that the certainty of faith is a result of the moral appeal of the gospel to the human conscience, which is answered through regeneration
