Herman Bavinck - Christian Worldview

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Christian Worldview

Christian Worldview

Herman Bavinck

Translated and edited by

Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock

Christian Worldview

Copyright 2019 by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock

Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Originally published in Dutch as Christelijke wereldbeschouwing , first edition by Bos in 1904, second edition by Kok in 1913, and third edition by Kok in 1929. This book is a translation of the second edition, which is in the public domain.

Cover Design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are drawn from the authors own translation of the Greek.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6319-5
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6322-5
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6320-1
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6321-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bavinck, Herman, 18541921, author. | Sutanto, Nathaniel Gray, 1991, editor.

Title: Christian worldview / Herman Bavinck ; translated and edited by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock.

Other titles: Christelijke wereldbeschouwing. English

Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018046329 (print) | LCCN 2018047966 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433563201 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433563218 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433563225 (epub) | ISBN 9781433563195 (hc)

Subjects: LCSH: ChristianityPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC BR100 (ebook) | LCC BR100 .B37513 2019 (print) | DDC 230.01dc23

LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018 6329

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2019-09-30 09:54:10 AM

Contents

Herman Bavinck for the Twenty-First Century

This project could not have come to fruition without the generous help of many. First of all, we would like to thank Jonathan Gibson for his enthusiasm for this volume and for putting us in touch with Crossway. Thanks are also due to Justin Taylor and Jill Carter at Crossway for overseeing this work and for their commitment to bringing this project to completion.

In addition to his often-difficult Dutch syntax, Herman Bavinck also lavishly adorns his prose with German, Latin, and other foreign phrases or citations. Hence, many others were consulted to aid in the translating process. For their help in this regard, we would like to thank Michael Brutigam, Ulrich Schmiedel, Nicholas Adams, Dolf te Velde, Ekke Oosterhuis and Mathilde Oosterhuis-Blok, Bram van den Heuvel, and especially the abundantly patient Marinus de Jong.

Gray Sutanto: I would like to thank the session and staff of Covenant City Church for their patience and willingness to permit me the time to undertake this taskTezar Putra, Elius Pribadi, Brett Bonnema, Jackie Burns, Emily Hendradjaja, and Tiffany Wijaya. It is a delight to labor with such a wonderful team. I am grateful, too, to my fiance (at the time of writing), Indita Probosutedjo, for her patience, care, and love; to my parents, Leo Sutanto and Elly Yanti Noor; to my sisters, Novi, Mitzy, and Cindy Christina; and to my brothers-in-law, Aryo Kresnadi and Adriansyah Sukandar. Gods providence and care often become tangible by means of their presence.

James Eglinton: I am grateful to Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock for their invitation to join this exciting translation project.

Cory Brock: Thanks are due to First Presbyterian Church Jackson for allowing me time to complete this work in the early days of ministry there. And, for Gray and me, Jamess expertise has been invaluable in the completion of the project, and special acknowledgment is due to him.

We acknowledge all mistakes and shortcomings as our own.

Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory Brock

Jakarta, Edinburgh, and Jackson

September 2018

Herman Bavinck for the Twenty-First Century

Since the recent English translation of his Reformed Dogmatics (20032008), Herman Bavinck (18541921)the chief dogmatician of the Dutch Reformed tradition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centurieshas gained a wide hearing among theologians in the twenty-first century. Bavinck was born into the orthodox Reformed tradition stemming from the 1834 Secession ( Afscheiding ) within the Dutch Reformed Church, a tradition committed simultaneously to Protestant orthodoxy and to the articulation of that orthodoxy in the rapidly changing cultural environs of the late modern Netherlands.

The cultural experience common to modern EuropeansBavinck included, by implicationwas marked by constant social, intellectual, technological, cultural, and spiritual upheaval. T. C. W. Blanning memorably describes that generations ever-present awareness that the ground [was] moving beneath their feet. This volume, Christian Worldview , is the first English translation of Bavincks address to a world in the throes of profound change on every front.

Contours of a Christian Worldview

In Bavincks context, the philosophy of Ernest Renanwith its spirit of scientific materialismhad dominated the late nineteenth century. Alongside this thinking, however, the youth of Zarathustra had failed: religion had not died, although the classic Christian religion was under suspicion and despised. In this milieu, Bavinck began his book Christelijke wereldbeschouwing , or Christian Worldview , by noting the consequence of this modern problem: Before all else, what strikes us in the modern age is the internal discord that consumes the self.

The modern self, he argued, both disparages religion (feeling) at the hand of science (thinking) and desperately needs what it rejects. The modern will feels the weight of the moral order but acts in dissociation with its own deepest needs and desires. Herein, one finds a brief definition of worldview : it is an attempt to unify the self, the head and heart, on the ground of a primary agreement between religion, science, and philosophy. A world-and-life view means, in brief, faith seeking understanding. It is important to note that Bavincks preferred term is world-and-life view , rather than merely worldview . In a world-and-life view, the term world refers to the objective domain, reality outside the self; the term life refers to the human subject, the consciousness and its needs, desires, knowledge, and affections. A unified world-and-life view seeks justification for the unity between the subjective and objective. And at the dawn of the twentieth century, Bavinck argued, A unified [ einheitliche ] world-and-life view is lacking, and therefore this word is the slogan of our day.

For this reason, in a significant adaptation of Immanuel Kants (17241804) notion of the Anschauungen (intuitions), Bavincks and Abraham Kuypers (18371920) wereldbeschouwing helped birth the contemporary use of the concept Christian worldview . The Christian wereldbeschouwing uniquely addresses several fundamental questions that all worldviews must face and offers a derivative thesis: