Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)

Introduction

One might justly feel that Herman Bavinck had the unfortunate lot of being Abraham Kuyper’s closest colleague. Since their deaths, Kuyper’s in 1920 and Bavinck’s in 1921, many have assumed, not unreasonably, that the names go together. Sometimes “Kuyper,” very often “Kuyper and Bavinck,” but very rarely just “Bavinck.” In their own day, the flamboyant Kuyper was always the center of attention, and he has remained so in treatments of Neo-Calvinism ever since. Bavinck was, on the other hand, quiet, mild-mannered, and, for the most part, content to avoid the lime- light. Subsequent scholarship has largely obliged him this unjust modesty. Yet after a hundred years, the wider world is beginning to realize what the Dutch have often sensed more keenly: of the two men, it was Bavinck, not Kuyper, who was the true theologian of Dutch Neo-Calvinism. With the publication of Bavinck’s magnum opus, his Reformed Dogmatics, in English, Bavinck’s name is now being uttered as it should: less relegated to the shadow of Kuyper and more as an independent authority.1 Herman Bavinck’s overriding, life-long concern explains his association with Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism.2 That concern, which at times for him was nothing less than an existential crisis, was the relationship between Chris- tianity and culture. What is the Christian’s proper place in the world? Is there a third way between extreme asceticism and world-rejection, on the

1 Henry Dosker, in his 1921 eulogy of Bavinck, refused to compare Kuyper and Bavinck, writing that the “law of perspective forbids it.” But then he immediately writes, “We might be surer of our ground had Kuyper left a well-worked out magnum opus on theology. It was in his mind to do so, but he never accomplished the task.” Perspective or not, consider the comparison complete. C.f., “Herman Bavinck: A Eulogy by Henry Elias Dosker,” in Her- man Bavinck, Essays on Religion, Science & Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 13–14. 2 Rather than provide a typical biography here, I will highlight the aspects of his personal history I find most relevant to the present topic. For an accessible and outstanding bio- graphical sketch, see Eric D. Bristley, Guide to the Writings of Herman Bavinck (Grand Rap- ids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 9–27; also Ron Gleason, Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, and Theologian (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2010). For a helpful introduction to the historical context of Neo-Calvinism, see Justus M. van der Kroef, “Abraham Kuyper and the Rise of Neo-Calvinism in the Netherlands,” Church History 17 (1948): 316–34. 2 introduction one hand, and worldliness on the other? Is the choice between monastic withdrawal versus nominal Christianity? These seem, often, to be the only choices available, and Bavinck felt it deeply, due in some measure to his own biography. The son of a successionist minister, his upbringing was in the more pietist branch of the Dutch Reformed church (the Afscheiding). After a year of schooling at the small, denominational seminary in Kampen, he shocked his entire family and church community by declar- ing his intention to study at the University of Leiden, which was a hot-bed of theological liberalism, led by such eminent figures as J.H. Scholten and Abraham Keunen. Over the objections of many, Bavinck went to Leiden, excelled in his studies, and kept his faith, although he lamented that his experience spiritually impoverished him. For him, Leiden heightened the question of the relation between Christianity and culture, between nature and grace. One could perhaps psychologize it this way: is it either Kampen or Leiden, or can one have elements of both, and remain faithful to God?3 He expresses the importance of the question this way in his lecture on common grace: At the bottom of every serious question lies the self-same problem. The relation of faith and knowledge, of theology and philosophy, of authority and reason, of head and heart, of Christianity and humanity, of religion and culture, of heavenly and earthly vocation, of religion and morality, of the contemplative and the active life, of sabbath and workday, of church and state—all these and many other questions are determined by the problem of the relation between creation and re-creation, between the work of the Father and the work of the Son. Even the simple, common man finds himself caught up in this struggle whenever he senses the tension that exists between his earthly and heavenly calling.4 Bavinck, by no means a simple, common man, felt himself pulled between two constituencies: more narrowly, his church, to which he sought always to be faithful, and more broadly, the world of academic theology, which he always viewed charitably even when firmly critiquing it (to the chagrin of Kuyper, who thought he was at times too soft on liberalism). It is rarely pointed out that this tension only arises from the blessing (curse?) that he was so accomplished in both: he was a faithful churchman, dedicated

3 It will shortly become clear that I am not sympathetic to those who use this “tension” as leverage to find any number of inner contradictions in his thought, i.e., so-called “two Bavincks” approaches. Nevertheless, this was a life-long struggle for which he sought, and found, unity. 4 “CG,” 55–56.