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God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology
- GenresTheology
230 pages, Hardcover
Published August 8, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 28, 2025
Some parts were truly outstanding, others raised eyebrows and questions. Hopefully will write a review soon. Regardless, top-notch work by a serious scholar. Bavinck, even when you disagree with him, is a fruitful conversation partner.
March 12, 2025
Top notch work from Gray. This work pairs excellently with Eglinton’s work on Bavinck’s organic motif.
Gray pulls not just from Bavinck’s Dogmatics but plenty from Philosophy of Revelation, Wonderful Works, Foundations of Psychology, Christian Worldview, and from shorter writings like his Catholicity of Christianity and Common Grace.
Some quotes -
62 “…Bavinck was seeking to demonstrate a belief in the revelatory origins of religion need not denigrate an account of revelation’s psychological and historical mediation, or of the soul’s embodied character.”
85 “The implicit theology of CSR (cognitive science of religion), however, is far from the God of classical theism — the common report of the doctrine of God for most of Christian thought… However, if Bavinck’s affective theological anthropology and an account of general revelation are true, then the locus of general revelation is not in cognition, but rather in the affections - in that pre-categorical intuition and everyday experience not reducible to beliefs, not even implicit beliefs.” See also Dreyfus in chapter 4.
107 “Imputation accounts for why the first sin is thus imputed, but not every other sin Adam commits. On the other hand, federalism respects the created ontology of the human race and the unity of our shared human nature, and federalism would be crassly voluntaristic without this grounding in humanity's created nature. Federalism 'certainly does not rule out the truth contained in realism; on the contrary, it fully accepts it.’ As we have seen, federalism comports with the triune and organic make-up of humanity. If Bavinck is right, then, realism and federalism complement one another and need not be presented as a binary. Ian McFarland's critique, that Bavinck failed to provide a 'rationale' by which 'Adam can be described' as a federal head, then, does not take into sufficient account the Trinitarian and realist underpinnings of Bavinck's theological anthropology. Bavinck did not merely ground Adam's representative status on his being a 'first in a series, but on the organic make-up of humanity as an ectypal image of God's own unity-in-diversity. When Adam failed, Christ is the second Adam that undergirds the diversity of renewed humanity.”
119 “The upshot is clear: an organic anthropology and thus an organic soteriology require a rejection of any ethics that focuses on inward-focused piety, individualist conversion, and separatism. The renewal of the Spirit is a binding power, and as such binds societies, nations, and humanity together once again. As such, Bavinck's call for an organic spiritual reformation of humanity does not result in the valorization of any particular nation, but rather looks toward a single kingdom of God which unites a diversity of nations in a way finally achievable only in the eschaton. This conviction led him presciently to critique the rising German nationalism in the early twentieth century as being woefully inattentive to the unity of humanity. It is thus no surprise that Bavinck was planning to devote his unfinished fourth volume of the Ethics to the spheres of the family, society, the state, and so on.”
167 “If divine revelation is to be an operative norming norm, the interpretive process requires not merely listening to one tradition, but is itself a catholic and ecumenical process that takes into account the global context of revelation's reception. Developing a Christian worldview is more like constructing a map, and one needs investigators from every corner of the globe to form a reliable map, which itself is not to be confused with the reality which the map is approximating. Bavinck himself recognizes this, when he argues that Reformed theology is not co-extensive with Christianity, despite connoting that it is precisely through Reformed theology that the capaciousness of Christian faith might be best recognized. In Bavinck's oft-cited words, after reflecting on the ways in which American Christianity differs from the Dutch: 'Calvinism, after all, 'is not the only truth!’”
181 “While the covenant of grace involves the sending of the incarnate Son to redeem sinners, it
'does not hang in the air but rests on an eternal, unchanging foundation. It is firmly grounded in the counsel and covenant of the triune God and is the application and execution of it that infallibly follows?" This appeal to the eternal counsel (the pactum salutis) as the backdrop for the sending of the incarnate Son in the third volume of the Dogmatics refers back to the discussion on the divine counsel in the second volume: the one simple and eternal decree of God unfolds itself before our eyes in time in a vast multiplicity of things and events?”
197 “Chalcedon did not explain how the divine person might indwell the human, but merely affirmed that this was so. Similarly, a Reformed account of the beatific vision should uphold the Scriptural data and outline that, in Christ, we are united with God without going in excess by explicating how that union works that goes beyond Scriptural data: 'it [the incarnation] is integrally connected with the essence of religion' When Bavinck uses the term 'mystical' union, then, the sense of mystical for Bavinck consists merely in denoting a mystery that cannot be explained. To say it another way: Just as Chalcedon defined Christology in ways that outline both what must be affirmed and the boundaries of orthodoxy, without explicating the central mystery confessed, so should a Protestant conception of the beatific vision do the same.”
Gray pulls not just from Bavinck’s Dogmatics but plenty from Philosophy of Revelation, Wonderful Works, Foundations of Psychology, Christian Worldview, and from shorter writings like his Catholicity of Christianity and Common Grace.
Some quotes -
62 “…Bavinck was seeking to demonstrate a belief in the revelatory origins of religion need not denigrate an account of revelation’s psychological and historical mediation, or of the soul’s embodied character.”
85 “The implicit theology of CSR (cognitive science of religion), however, is far from the God of classical theism — the common report of the doctrine of God for most of Christian thought… However, if Bavinck’s affective theological anthropology and an account of general revelation are true, then the locus of general revelation is not in cognition, but rather in the affections - in that pre-categorical intuition and everyday experience not reducible to beliefs, not even implicit beliefs.” See also Dreyfus in chapter 4.
107 “Imputation accounts for why the first sin is thus imputed, but not every other sin Adam commits. On the other hand, federalism respects the created ontology of the human race and the unity of our shared human nature, and federalism would be crassly voluntaristic without this grounding in humanity's created nature. Federalism 'certainly does not rule out the truth contained in realism; on the contrary, it fully accepts it.’ As we have seen, federalism comports with the triune and organic make-up of humanity. If Bavinck is right, then, realism and federalism complement one another and need not be presented as a binary. Ian McFarland's critique, that Bavinck failed to provide a 'rationale' by which 'Adam can be described' as a federal head, then, does not take into sufficient account the Trinitarian and realist underpinnings of Bavinck's theological anthropology. Bavinck did not merely ground Adam's representative status on his being a 'first in a series, but on the organic make-up of humanity as an ectypal image of God's own unity-in-diversity. When Adam failed, Christ is the second Adam that undergirds the diversity of renewed humanity.”
119 “The upshot is clear: an organic anthropology and thus an organic soteriology require a rejection of any ethics that focuses on inward-focused piety, individualist conversion, and separatism. The renewal of the Spirit is a binding power, and as such binds societies, nations, and humanity together once again. As such, Bavinck's call for an organic spiritual reformation of humanity does not result in the valorization of any particular nation, but rather looks toward a single kingdom of God which unites a diversity of nations in a way finally achievable only in the eschaton. This conviction led him presciently to critique the rising German nationalism in the early twentieth century as being woefully inattentive to the unity of humanity. It is thus no surprise that Bavinck was planning to devote his unfinished fourth volume of the Ethics to the spheres of the family, society, the state, and so on.”
167 “If divine revelation is to be an operative norming norm, the interpretive process requires not merely listening to one tradition, but is itself a catholic and ecumenical process that takes into account the global context of revelation's reception. Developing a Christian worldview is more like constructing a map, and one needs investigators from every corner of the globe to form a reliable map, which itself is not to be confused with the reality which the map is approximating. Bavinck himself recognizes this, when he argues that Reformed theology is not co-extensive with Christianity, despite connoting that it is precisely through Reformed theology that the capaciousness of Christian faith might be best recognized. In Bavinck's oft-cited words, after reflecting on the ways in which American Christianity differs from the Dutch: 'Calvinism, after all, 'is not the only truth!’”
181 “While the covenant of grace involves the sending of the incarnate Son to redeem sinners, it
'does not hang in the air but rests on an eternal, unchanging foundation. It is firmly grounded in the counsel and covenant of the triune God and is the application and execution of it that infallibly follows?" This appeal to the eternal counsel (the pactum salutis) as the backdrop for the sending of the incarnate Son in the third volume of the Dogmatics refers back to the discussion on the divine counsel in the second volume: the one simple and eternal decree of God unfolds itself before our eyes in time in a vast multiplicity of things and events?”
197 “Chalcedon did not explain how the divine person might indwell the human, but merely affirmed that this was so. Similarly, a Reformed account of the beatific vision should uphold the Scriptural data and outline that, in Christ, we are united with God without going in excess by explicating how that union works that goes beyond Scriptural data: 'it [the incarnation] is integrally connected with the essence of religion' When Bavinck uses the term 'mystical' union, then, the sense of mystical for Bavinck consists merely in denoting a mystery that cannot be explained. To say it another way: Just as Chalcedon defined Christology in ways that outline both what must be affirmed and the boundaries of orthodoxy, without explicating the central mystery confessed, so should a Protestant conception of the beatific vision do the same.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews