Journal: Reformed Presbyterian Theological Journal
Volume: RPTJ 09:1 (Fall 2022)
Article: Bavinck: A Critical Biography
Author: J. Jack Gamble-Smith

RPTJ 9:1 (Fall 2022) p. 71

Bavinck: A Critical Biography

J. Jack Gamble-Smith

PhD Candidate in Systematic Theology University of Edinburgh

James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), pp. xxi + 450. $38.73.

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of scholarship on Herman Bavinck—arguably the most significant Dutch Reformed theologian of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. This increased interest in Bavinck has led to considerable debate over his theological and philosophical identity—was he “the academic theologian” (wetenschappelijk theolog) or “the churchly dogmatician” (kerkelijk dogmaticus)?1 Since Bavinck left the humble seminary in Kampen (of which he would later write, “The education there did not satisfy me”) to study purely academic theology under the famous Professors Scholten and Kuenen at Leiden in 1874, the question of his friend Henry Dosker has haunted Bavinck scholarship: “What can you seek there … ?”2 What could Bavinck, the child of the Seceder Movement and the Old Reformed Church, be seeking in the “lion’s den” of unbelief?3 Was he, as many have since claimed, vacillating between orthodoxy and modernity? What are we to make of his conservative upbringing, scientific theological education, and fascination with Reformed dogmatics, philosophy, politics, and psychology? This perceived tension between modernity and orthodoxy has led some to speak of the “schizophrenic” Bavinck.4

In James Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Critical Biography, Eglinton has masterfully argued for a single “modern, yet orthodox” Bavinck—a man who, as Eglinton wrote, “explored the possibility of an orthodox life in a changing world.”5 In Eglinton’s wake, an army of Bavinck enthusiasts have followed, contending for a non-Schizophrenic Bavinck. The more Bavinck publications pour into Anglophone bookshelves, the more apparent it is that Bavinck does not need a defense, however. It is clear that the Reformed tradition would benefit from his example as it seeks to engage a radically evolving western landscape with the old truths of the Christian faith.

In eleven chapters, James Eglinton has led us behind the scenes of towering works like Reformed Dogmatics and Reformed Ethics to meet the vacillating, humble, and human mind behind the pen. Chapters 1–3 explore Herman’s early life and the modernizing world he found beneath his feet; chapters 4 a...