Journal: Reformed Baptist Theological Review
Volume: RBTR 01:2 (Jul 2004)
Article: Reformed Dogmatics: Volume One (Prolegomena)
Author: Herman Bavinck

RBTR 1:2 (Jul 2004) p. 189

Reformed Dogmatics: Volume One (Prolegomena)

Herman Bavinck

edited by John Bolt and Translated by John Vriend
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press, 2003),
reviewed by Samuel E. Waldron1

This volume is the first in Bavinck’s four-volume Reformed Dogmatics originally published in Dutch and now being translated into English by the Dutch Reformed Translation Society (Gereformeerd Dogmatiek was

RBTR 1:2 (Jul 2004) p. 190

originally published between 1895 and 1901). Parts of Bavinck’s work have been previously translated and published in three distinct volumes as The Doctrine of God, In the Beginning: Foundations of Creation Theology, and The Last Things: Hope for This World and the Next. The present publication, however, represents the first attempt to give us in English Bavinck’s classic dogmatics in order and in full. The editor has prefaced each chapter with a very helpful one or two page summary. These summaries are italicized to distinguish them from the text of the translation, are quite faithful to Bavinck, and enable the reader to quickly refresh his memory with regard to the contents of each chapter.

Herman Bavinck succeeded Abraham Kuyper as the professor of systematic theology at the Free University of Amsterdam. It is no exaggeration when the editor remarks, “Herman Bavinck’s Gereformeerd Dogmatiek, first published one hundred years ago, represents the concluding high point of some four centuries of remarkably productive Dutch Reformed theological reflection” (11).

The Dutch Reformed Translation Society has done an incalculable service to Reformed and Evangelical theology in the English-speaking world with this volume and its intended successors. This is true in many respects, but – if I may personalize the value of this volume – reading Bavinck’s Prolegomena filled a gaping hole in my understanding of Dutch Reformed theology. Having read and used extensively Abraham Kuyper’s Principle of Sacred Theology, Louis Berkhof’s Introduction to Systematic Theology, and the various philosophical and apologetic writings of Cornelius Van Til, this volume filled the gap between Kuyper and Van Til and revealed important, mediating theological developments. Bavinck’s Prolegomena provides in undiluted strength and philosophical development many of the perspectives popularized (and over-simplified) in Berkhof.

Summary

Prolegomena means the things said before. In this first volume of his dogmatics, Bavinck provides a full-scale treatment of the issues that are foundational and introductory to systemati...