199 REVIEWS of BOOKS Thornwell Leading the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States in Its Defense of Confederate Secession

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 199

Thornwell leading the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States in its defense of Confederate secession (G, pp. 312-16). Gutjahr and Hoffecker both speak of Thornwell as the spokesman for southern Presbyterianism, but they fail to note that what Hoffecker calls the “Southern position” on the elder question failed to garner more than seven southern votes at the General Assembly of 1843 (H, p. 273). While Thornwell’s views became more prom inent in the late 1850s, the Southern Presbyterian church never fully embraced his distinctive positions. In terms of production, I was surprised that Oxford University Press overlooked so many typos and sentence fragments (I was not going to mention this, but it was so frequent as to become distracting). On the other hand, Gutjahr provides a very helpful “cast of characters” at the beginning, along with fifty-eight portraits and charts scattered throughout the book that very winsomely illustrate his text. Quibbles aside, both authors have demonstrated their love of neighbor in these volumes. They have loved Charles Hodge by presenting portraits of him that accurately and fairly reflect the man and his times; and they have loved their readers by offering us the fruits of their labors in such clear and insightful prose. Most readers will want to start with Gutjahr’s volume since he provides the best contextual portrait of Hodge, but Hoffecker’s portrait will then help the reader appreciate some of the Princetonian nuances of Hodge’s life, doctrine, and character.

P eter J . W al l ace Pastor, Michiana Covenant PCA, Granger, Indiana Adjunct professor, Mid America Reformed Seminary, Dyer, Indiana

James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif. T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology. London: T&T Clark, 2012. Pp. xiv + 224. $120, cloth.

Now that H erm an Bavinck’s classic Gereformeerde Dogmatiek has reached the Anglo- phonic world by its standard English translation and republication as Reformed Dogmatics, many in the Reformed tradition are eager for a fresh harvest of secondary literature on the Dutch neo-Calvinist theologian. Among the firstfruits is James Eglinton’s Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif the published version of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Edinburgh (supervised by Prof. David Fergusson). Eglinton defdy contends that Bavinck utilized “organism” as his preferred explanatory paradigm for the unity-in-diversity found throughout the cosmos and grounded the motif in an orthodox Reformed confession of the Trinity. The claim is as simple as it is significant: Bavinck believed that as every created thing points back to the existence and power of the triune God, not only theology, but also creation, history, and revelation will exhibit a derivative and “organic” multifaceted coherence. To put it even more tersely (and, in the book, repeatedly), for Bavinck, “a theology of Trinity ad intra requires a cosmology of organicism ad extra” (p. 68; cf. pp. 72, 80, 168, 170, 179, 200, 205). More broadly, as it takes its proper place only within the “radical 200 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL theocentrism” (p. 82) of Bavinck’s worldview, the organic motif also provides powerful evidence that despite the modern education he received at Leiden—and frequently, as Eglinton shows, in conscious response to it—Bavinck remained a loyal son of the Afscheidingwho preserved and advanced the orthodox Reformed tradition. Eglinton burnishes Bavinck’s Reformed credentials in explicit opposition to the so-called two-Bavinck hypothesis, which has dominated Bavinck studies for decades (hence the subtide’s promise of a “new reading”). Fueled by Jan Veenhof’s mammoth 1968 dissertation, Revelatie en Inspiratie, this older view, writes Eglinton, has tended to read Bavinck as “a Jekyll and Hyde theologian who vacillates between moments of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘modernity’ without ever resolving his own basic crisis of theological identity” (p. 28). According to Eglinton, the assumption of a bipolar Bavinck has even become a “hermeneutical lens” (p. 28) through which, in part, to attribute the organic motif to the allegedly “modern” Bavinck, a Bavinck who never fully broke from the threefold spell of German Idealism (especially Schelling), the “history of religions” school, and the Dutch ethical theologians of his day. By vindicating organism as “the primary agent of synthesis” (p. 34) in Bavinck’s theology rather than as a symptom of its internal division, Trinity and Organism seeks to open up fresh avenues for further studies of Bavinck as a consistently Reformed dogmatician. The book opens by situating Bavinck within “the key movements and schools of thought” (p. 4) in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Holland (ch. 1). A quick but thorough tour of the Heusdiaans, the Groningers, and the Leiden theologians, with detours into the relevant twists and turns of Dutch political life, frames Bavinck the man in a way that makes his theology come alive from a historical perspective. For example, in light of the rigid determinism Bavinck encountered under Johannes Schölten at Leiden and the emerging “religious studies” departments in Holland’s universities (see the Higher Education Act of 1876), as well as the vitiating effects of each on the revealed character of theology, Eglinton argues that “one must read his Dogmatics as a striving for the reassertion of theology in post-Enlightenment Europe” (p. 19). In chapters 2 and 3, Eglinton introduces Veenhof’s “two-Bavinck hypothesis” before aiming to dismantle it. After exploring how scholarly shifts in organicist historiography (van Eck) and Bavinck studies (Mattson, Kloosterman) have left Bavinck’s theology complex but coherent, Eglinton further patches up the cleaved theologian by giving a controlling role to Bavinck’s own writings and definition of the “organic” (pp. 65-72), a perspective too often neglected by Bavinck’s axe-wielding interpreters. If the longstand- ing “two-Bavinck hypothesis” already stood “on the brink of collapse” (p. 51), Trinity and Organism supplies more than ample dynamite to finish the job. An integrated, not divided, Herman Bavinck sets the stage for a recalibrated reading of his organic motif along Calvinistic and Reformed, rather than modem philosophical, lines. The most pivotal chapter (4) of the book is also the longest (49 pp.). Here Eglinton establishes the unique and incomprehensible Trinity—“a being of immense diversity and profound unity” (p. 104)—as the ontological undergirding for Bavinck’s theology as a whole and for his use of the organic motif in particular. By structuring his theology roughly according to the respective identities and functions of the Father (creation), the Son (salvation), and the Spirit (the church), Bavinck sees the self-revelation of REVIEWS OF BOOKS 201 the Trinity rather than speculative human reason as taking center stage as theology’s prindpium. One important corollary of this method, Eglinton writes, is Bavinck’s uncom- mon willingness among the Reformed to identify “the complex, interconnected web of vestigia trinitatis” (p. 81) in the cosmos, but only so long as Scripture—not an isolated natural theology—plays the determinative role. Another “key development” (p. 86) for finding traces of the Trinity in creation is Bavinck’s emphasis on “the non-numerically specified pattern of generic unity in-diversity” rather than the “tenuous ‘triads’ of me- dieval theology” (pp. 131-32). Eglinton correctly notes, however, thatBavinck “does not entirely dismiss tripartism” (p. 88; cf. 85), and on that point, one might wish the author would have evaluated the array of creational triads Bavinck does affirm in volume 2 of Reformed Dogmatics. Next, the overarching notion that, for Bavinck, “the Trinity is wholly unlike any- thing else, but everything else is like the Trinity” (p. 89) leads to discrete treatments of Bavinck’s application of the organic motif to general revelation (ch. 5), special revelation (ch. 6), and ecclesiology (ch. 7), each of which exhibits a “triniformity” (p. 183) of its own. For example, God’s sovereignty over history does not undermine, but rather undergirds, the purposefulness of diverse human choices. Similarly, Scripture’s divine and human aspects manifest a unity-in-diversity—with Christ as its “organic centre” (p. 171)—that is opposed to biblicist and m odern views of inspiration alike. Finally, the invisible unity of the elect stands behind the diverse expressions of the visible church, which itself operates as a coherent institution and living organism in the world. Such insights rep- resent only the tip of the iceberg—or, better, a few branches on the vine—of Eglinton’s development of Bavinck’s single-minded trinitarian vision. The Reformed reader of Trinity and Organism will look in vain for glaring doctrinal weaknesses. Still, a few observations are worth mentioning. Eglinton opens a door for misunderstanding when he advocates that Bavinck held to a “real, independent existence” (p. 103) of both God and the cosmos. Later, he adds that the “independence of God’s being, for Bavinck, finds its counterpart in the genuine independence of the creature” (p. 117). Rather than offer a footnote qualifying his use of “independent” for non-divine existence (p. 103 n. 91), perhaps it would have been better for Eglinton to follow Bavinck (see the quotes on p. 179) in consistently ascribing to creation a distinct and decidedly dependent existence. Admittedly, this is a picayune complaint. But it adumbrates further potential head-scratching moments for the reader over Bavinck’s ontology. For instance, Eglinton presents Bavinck’s anthropology and Christology as representing “two exceptions” (p. 122) to his “otherwise universal Creator-creature distinction” (p. 123). Eglinton explains further that because Bavinck sees certain “signs of immutability” in man (p. 123) he therefore “regards the human as having two separate ontologies (mutuable and immutable) or a dual ontology which combines the two (one ontology in two natures)” (p. 124). Instead of suggesting such “an unusual Christological-anthropological imago Dei innovation” (p. 121), might Bavinck simply be claiming, uniquely for the imago Dei, that, as Eglinton quotes him earlier, “there can be no question of change if there is no identity and continuity of the subject” (p. 120)? Additionally, one wonders whether the incarnation for Bavinck is best described as “the perfect meeting place of the otherwise ontologically mutually exclusive” and 202 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

“the ultimately ontological impossibility made possible” (p. 127). Such statements risk sounding as though Eglinton has confused the Spirit-wrought hypostatic character of the incarnational union with something both Chalcedon and Bavinck were intent to guard against, namely, an ontological convergence of divine and creaturely realities. It is reassuring that Eglinton is at his most tentative in these sections, and the concerns here do not detract from the force of his overall thesis. These quibbles notwithstanding, Eglinton’s work breaks new and important ground for the future of Bavinck studies. While a few previous works have sought to defend Bavinck’s orthodoxy on particular doctrines (e.g., Richard Gaffin’s God’s Word in Servant Form), Trinity and Organism boldly and effectively reclaims the Dutch theologian’s most widely utilized and integrating motif in order to demonstrate that “Bavinck’s basic identity and concerns were primarily tied to the thoroughgoing Trinitarianism of historic Reformed orthodoxy” (p. 81). If the Dogmatiek was Bavinck’s attem pt to reassert the legitimacy of revealed theology in a modem world (p. 19), one cannot help but read Trinity and Organism as a similar striving for the reassertion of Bavinck’s relevance in a day when the task of dogmatics is all too frequently viewed as passé. Indeed, Bavinck’s rigor- ously theocentric theological method grounded in, and in service of, a coherent system of doctrine stands in sharp contrast to the hodge-podge of today’s theological marketplace. Eglinton closes the book by calling for a “paradigm shift in Bavinck studies” (p. 209), one that appreciates how one of Holland’s greatest theologians remained loyal to his Reformed heritage while engaging modern trends as he went to work on the multifaceted data of biblical revelation. Eglinton’s work undoubtedly serves as promising seed for such future development.

R. C arl ton W ynne Westminster Theological Seminary

Steven Knowles, Beyond Evangelicalism: The Theological Methodology of Stanley J. Grenz. Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. 213. $99.95, cloth.

Because evangelical theology has been “shackled to Enlightenment thought,” mod emist tendencies have kept evangelicals from a serious examination of their theological methodology, argues Steven Knowles. Of those evangelicals who have ventured to reexamine the question of theological methodology in light of postmodern critiques, Stanley Grenz was unquestionably one of the most influential thinkers before his un- timely death in 2005. Knowles’s study of Grenz’s work concludes that “although Grenz is correct to employ certain aspects of postmodern thought, too often his analysis and appropriation of key areas is uncritical” (p. 2). Throughout his book Knowles seeks to answer the question of whether Grenz’s engagement with postmodern theory takes his resulting theological methodology beyond the pale of evangelicalism. Chapter 1 addresses postmodernism, and Knowles specifically addresses those aspects of postmodernism that have significant bearing on evangelical theology. He explains The Westminster Theological Journal Est. 1938

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