Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: The "Imago Dei" Shapes The "Visio Dei": Herman Bavinck’s Covenantal Formulation Of The Image Of God From The Garden Of Eden To New Jerusalem
Author: Michael R. Carlino

The Imago Dei Shapes The Visio Dei: Herman Bavinck’s Covenantal Formulation Of The Image Of God From The Garden Of Eden To New Jerusalem

Michael R. Carlino

Michael R. Carlino is a PhD candidate in Systematic Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He is a graduate of Lancaster Bible College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Southern Seminary where he earned his MDiv degree. He currently serves as the Operations Director for the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the Associate for the Mathena Center for Church Revitalization at Southern Seminary. He has written several articles and reviews and published at “Christ Over All” (www.christoverall.com). Michael and his wife, Kylie, have two boys and are members at Kenwood Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, where Michael is one of the youth leaders.

Hans Boersma has criticized Dutch Neo-Calvinism broadly and Herman Bavinck specifically regarding what he alleges to be a deficient development of the beatific vision in their eschatology.1 He begins, “Dutch neo-Calvinism has generally been less than enamored with traditional teachings on the beatific vision. According to neo-Calvinists, rather than gaze eternally into the face of God, we will carry our cultural accomplishments over … and in the eschaton we will be actively engaged in social and cultural endeavors of various kinds.”2 He then turns his attention to Bavinck and claims, “Whereas formally he acknowledged that the beatific vision is the ‘core and center’ of eternal life, in actuality it never really took on this role within his eschatology. Bavinck was simply too much interested in the hustle and bustle of human

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activity in the hereafter to give any real thought to a positive articulation of the beatific vision.”3 Moreover, Boersma asserts Bavinck “nowhere positively understands the doctrine” and that “I suspect there is a reason Bavinck did not have a great deal of interest in developing a theology of the beatific vision: the overall drift of his eschatology is simply too this-worldly to do so.”4

I concur with Boersma that Dutch neo-Calvinism, and indeed Bavinck himself, were “less than enamored with traditional teachings on the beatific vision.” However, I find the criticism that this is rooted in a preoccupation with the “hustle and bustle of human activity” and that there is no positive articulation of the doctrine in Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics to be unsustainable. I am convinced it is not an inconsistent...