Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: The “Excellent Value” Of Nicaea In Herman Bavinck’s Theology: Nicene Christology In Relation To Bavinck’s Trinitarian, Catholic, And Orthodox, And Modern Theology
Author: Jessica Joustra

The “Excellent Value” Of Nicaea In Herman Bavinck’s Theology: Nicene Christology In Relation To Bavinck’s Trinitarian, Catholic, And Orthodox, And Modern Theology

Jessica Joustra

Jessica Joustra is Associate Professor of Religion and Theology and the Director of the Albert M. Wolters Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. She earned a PhD in Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. She is an editor and translator (with John Bolt, et al) of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics, vol. 1 and vol. 2 (Baker Academic, 2019, 2021). She is also co-editor (with Robert Joustra) of Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures (IVP, 2022).

The confession of the Council of Nicaea, alongside the other “great councils” (Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon), form the “universal foundation of the official Christian churches,”1 writes Herman Bavinck. At Nicaea, the council clearly “determined the relationship of Christ to the essence of God, to the world, and to humanity,”2 confessing that Christ is

begoven by the father as the only-begoven, that is, out of the being of God, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begoven, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things in heaven and earth were made, and in the Holy Spirit.3

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Thus, for Bavinck, the Christological and Trinitarian confession of the Council of Nicaea are of “excellent value,” leading “the church and theology down the right path.”4

As interest in Herman Bavinck’s theology continues to grow, many point to at least three hallmarks of his Reformed theology that are particularly compelling: its character as “thoroughly trinitarian,”5 “catholic in scope,”6 and “orthodox, yet modern.”7 These three hallmarks of Bavinck’s theology rightly have been areas of continued study. Upon the celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 2025, the trinitarian, catholic, and orthodox, yet modern aspects of Bavinck’s theology are worth examining once again, in light of his reflections on Nicene Christological and Trinitarian teaching.

In this article, I will explore the way that Bavinck’s engagement with Nicene teaching continues to elucidate the...