At TCI, one might see a reference every now and again to a “culture of persuasion.” For Bavinck, the propriety of such a vision is rooted in creation itself.
A freedom that cannot be obtained and enjoyed aside from the danger of licentiousness and caprice is still always to be preferred over a tyranny that suppresses liberty. In the creation of humanity, God himself chose this way of freedom, which carried with it the danger and actually the fact of sin as well, in preference to forced subjection. Even now, in ruling the world and governing the church, God still follows this royal road of liberty. It is precisely his honor that through freedom he nevertheless reaches his goal, creating order out of disorder, light from darkness, a cosmos out of chaos.
(Reformed Dogmatics vol. 1 (Prolegomena), ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 479)
