Herman Bavinck

Life

Bavinck was born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands. His father, Jan Bavinck, was a minister of the Christian Reformed Church, a body that had arisen from the 1834 Secession from the Dutch national church. At his father's urging, Bavinck first studied for about a year at the denomination's Theological School in Kampen. He then transferred to Leiden University, at the time regarded as a center of liberal theology, a move that reportedly worried many leaders of the Secession churches. In 1880 he received his doctorate in theology with a dissertation on the ethics of Huldrych Zwingli. He then served for about a year as pastor of a church in Franeker, in the province of Friesland. In 1891 he married Johanna Schippers. He died in Amsterdam on July 29, 1921.

Ministry and Contributions

In 1882 Bavinck was appointed professor at the Theological School in Kampen. From 1883 to 1902 he taught dogmatics, the discipline that sets forth the teaching of the church in systematic form. During this period he published his major work, the four-volume Reformed Dogmatics (1895–1901), followed by a revised edition in 1906–1911. The work is regarded as carrying forward the tradition of Reformed systematic theology since the Reformation while engaging broadly with the Church Fathers (the theologians of the early church), medieval theology, and modern thought.

In church affairs, he supported the union of his own denomination with the church led by Abraham Kuyper. The two bodies merged to form the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKN). Bavinck declined several invitations to join the Free University of Amsterdam, which Kuyper had founded, but in 1902 he succeeded Kuyper as professor of theology there and taught until his death. He is regarded, together with Kuyper, as a leading representative of Neo-Calvinism, a Dutch movement that sought to apply Calvinist faith to scholarship and to every area of society. He was also active in politics as a member of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. He influenced later Reformed theologians such as Louis Berkhof and Cornelius Van Til.

Influence on the Korean Church

Park Hyung-nong is regarded as having built his theology by drawing widely on the works of American theologians such as Berkhof, Hodge, and Warfield, as well as Dutch theologians such as Kuyper and Bavinck. Park Yune-sun is considered the first person to substantively introduce the Dutch Calvinist theology of Kuyper, Bavinck, and others to Korea.

The earliest of the Korean translations, Herman Bavinck's Principles of Theology, translated by Cha Young-bae, was published by Chongshin University in 1983. In 2011 the publisher Revival and Reformation Press completed its publication of the full four-volume Reformed Dogmatics, translated by Park Tae-hyun directly from the Dutch original. This Korean edition was presented as the second complete translation in the world, following the English edition completed in 2008. Other works have also been translated, including an abridged Reformed Dogmatics and The Wonderful Works of God, and Korean studies of Bavinck as well as translated biographies are available. In Korea he is sometimes called one of the "three great Calvinist theologians," together with Kuyper and Warfield.

Assessment

Reformed churches and theologians, including Presbyterians, hold Bavinck in high esteem as the theologian who brought Reformed systematic theology since Calvin to its comprehensive synthesis. His theology, however, rests on Calvinist doctrines such as predestination. Consequently, Methodist, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches standing in the Arminian or Wesleyan tradition understand the questions of salvation and predestination differently. Scholarly interpretations are also reported to diverge. One reading, the "two Bavincks" interpretation, holds that his thought contains a tension between orthodox Reformed theology and modern thought, while another views his work as a single, coherent system.