TITLE: Bavinck: A Critical Biography
AUTHOR: James Eglinton
PUBLISHER: Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020
I have to admit I was excited about reading James Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Critical Biography. My interest in Bavinck (1854-1921) came as a result of my early readings of Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987). From Van Til it doesn’t take long to notice the name Herman Bavinck which repeatedly comes up in Van Til’s texts, footnotes, and lectures. Van Til was so influenced by Bavinck he used to say of Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Reformed Dogmatics) is “the greatest and most comprehensive statement of Reformed systematic theology in modern times.” From such a glowing endorsement I became interested in Bavinck the theologian and have gained a wealth of insight yet without ever really knowing very much about Bavinck the man.
Bavink lived during a great transitional period in Dutch life. The Netherlands had migrated from an authoritarian monarchy to a state-sponsored liberal democracy. Under the state, there were many restrictions over religion. The government executed full control over religion from the songs that were sung to the sermons preached by the pastor. These state sponsored Churches were not known for their brimming orthodoxy but appear to have been institutions for the propagation of modernity. Out of this modernist movement were churches who opposed the heterodoxy of the state-sponsored churches and stood for orthodox Reformed Christianity. Against the backdrop of these modernist Churches, the orthodox Calvinistic Churches seemed out of place or out of touch with the new modernity. It was out of this tension between orthodoxy and modernity that Bavinck emerged as one of the most important theologians in Dutch history and one of the shining lights of Christendom.
As a young man, he received a traditional rigorous education. He was trained in the classical languages, Humanities, Music, Mathematics, and Logic. He transferred to the University of Leiden where his Christian convictions were at odds with the student party life. “Three hundredth anniversary of founding of Leiden, I was not in a festive mood and thus didn’t enjoy it much I saw the teeming crowd, that only uses the day as a reason for excess and debauchery, and then I thought, how little God is recognized for what he gives us.” “In those early student days, Bavinck found it hard to feel at home in a city where few felt any need to live Coram Deo. Life in Leiden was jarringly secular.” While that kept him from certain aspects of student life his pastor at Leiden was able to mentor Bavinck and taught him to have a more integrated existence on campus. But it wasn’t just the social life at Leiden that Bavinck found troubling. Many of his Professors were celebrity liberal Theologians whose teachings challenged the teachings of his upbringing. For Bavinck, his college experience wasn’t just academic. He had to learn to exist in an environment that was hostile to his faith and at the same time learn how to engage it with his conservative orthodoxy. It was that dualistic approach that became his method for his entire career. For some, it has caused so much confusion that some writers view him as a double-minded figure. But for Eglinton, this ability to speak orthodoxy into the modernist vernacular simply demonstrated Bavinck’s genius. Bavinck went on to become a Pastor, Professor, Theologian, Journal editor, and Statesman.
I’m not sure if anyone-besides Eglinton- has written a critical biography on Herman Bavinck yet. A “critical biography” sounds like something one would write to dismantle and poke holes in a person’s life and expose hypocracies or theological inconsistencies. But, a critical biography looks at the sources of the individual’s life and allows them to speak for themselves. Letters, notes, essays, publications, diaries, newspaper articles all become the subject of inquiry in a critical biography so that it wouldn’t be as if the biographer was simply telling the story he wants to tell about the individual void of any significant evidence. Good or bad the critical biography gives a well-examined account of the individual’s life and because of his extensive research into Bavinck there is no one better suited to give that account than Eglinton.
Bavinck consists of five parts that are in order of chronology as they progress through Bavinck’s life. Among the five parts are eleven chapters broken into five parts chronologically progressing through Bavinck’s life. Part one covering the first three chapters discusses Bavinck’s life and family context and begins with his childhood and early schooling. Part two develops further into his early education and part three explains his life as a pastor. Parts four and five discuss professorship at both Kampen and Amsterdam. Bavinck is a fantastic read that many in the church today can identify with. I would give Bavinck by James Eglinton 5 stars out 5.
James P. Eglinton is the Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology at the University of Edinburgh. He previously served as senior researcher in systematic and historical theology at the Theologische Universiteit Kampen. He is the author of Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Baker, 2020), and Trinity and Organism (Bloomsbury, 2012). He edited and translated Herman Bavinck on Preaching and Preachers (Hendrickson, 2017), co-edited and co-translated Christian Worldview (Crossway, 2019), and co-edited Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2012). He also serves as associate editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology.
I received a complimentary unfinished digital manuscript of this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review purposes. My comments are independent and my own. Quotations could change in the finished book. Pages for quotations are not provided due to receiving an unfinished manuscript.
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