An event celebrating the launch of two books on Herman Bavinck by Dr. Bruce Pass will be held on 26 October at the Brisbane School of Theology, Brisbane, Australia, from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm. (For those who wish to follow on Zoom, this is 5:30 am to 7:00 am EST, or 10:30 am to 12:00 in the U.K.) Presentations will be given by Dr. Mark Baddeley (Queensland Theological College) and Assoc Prof Ben Myers (Alphacrucis College), as well as by Bruce Pass.
Plenary sessions will examine the contours of Bavinck’s theology, roundtables will consider Bavinck’s relevance for contemporary Christianity, and short papers will address various aspects of Bavinck’s life, thought, and legacy.
Theme: Bavinck’s theology, life, thought, legacy, and relevance for contemporary Christianity.
John Bolt and two team members answer questions at the book launch event at Calvin Seminary
A video recording of the book launch of Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics at Calvin Theological Seminary on 24 September 2019 can be viewed here. At the event, John Bolt and two members of his editorial team, Nelson Kloosterman and Antoine Theron, shared perspectives about the challenging process of translating and editing Bavinck’s work.
The Bavinck Institute at Calvin Seminary is pleased to release The Bavinck Review 7 (2016) (1.2 MB PDF). See the editorial for an update on the Reformed Ethics project, two additional pending publications, and the formal establishment of the Institute.
In the lecture Professor Bratt unpacks the historical context of Herman Bavinck’s 1908 Stone Lectures.
He builds upon a twofold motif first suggested by Professor George Harinck as a summary of the tensions evident in Bavinck’s life and thought: movement from the outside world to the inside, and from the inside to the outside. This double movement highlights a key note in Bavinck’s Reformed catholic theology generally and within the Stone Lectures in particular: the conciliation between modern life and ancient faith.
Jacob Klapwijk, “Rationality in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist Tradition,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan Van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 113–131.
Bruce R. Pass, “Herman Bavinck and the Problem of New Wine in Old Wineskins,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 17, no. 4 (2015): 432–49, doi:10.1111/ijst.12118.
Bruce R. Pass, “Herman Bavinck and the Cogito,” Reformed Theological Review 74, no. 1 (2015): 15–33.
Alvin Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan Van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, 363–83. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
David S. Sytsma, “Herman Bavinck’s Thomistic Epistemology: The Argument and Sources of His Principia of Science,” in Five Studies in the Thought of Herman Bavinck, A Creator of Modern Dutch Theology, ed. John Bolt (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2011), 1–56.
Albert M. Wolters, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan Van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, 113–31. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
Visser’s lecture was published as “Religion, Mission, and Kingdom: A Comparison of Herman and Johan Herman Bavinck,” Calvin Theological Journal 45, no. 1 (2010): 117–32.
The respondent is the Rev. Dr. Allan Janssen. Starting at ~66:00, Janssen provides an intriguing foray into the recently published lectures of A. A. van Ruler on natural and revealed theology as an additional point of comparison between H. and J. H. Bavinck.
Related resources
Paul J. Visser, Heart for the Gospel, Heart for the World: The Life and Thought of a Reformed Pioneer Missiologist, Johan Herman Bavinck, 1895-1964 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003).
Paul J. Visser, “Reformed Principles as Remaining Roots,” in Shirley J. Roels, ed., Reformed Mission in an Age of World Christianity: Ideas for the 21st Century, 37–44 (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin Press, 2011).
Paul J. Visser, “Religion in Biblical and Reformed Perspective,” Calvin Theological Journal 44, no. 1 (2009): 9–36.
For these lectures scholars are invited who share Bavinck’s love for Reformed theology, are enthusiastic about his take on grace as a transforming force in both personal life, society and culture, and who in there academic work reflect his deep and catholic view on the Christian faith. They are asked to answer important questions in their lectures concerning the value of Reformed theology in a postmodern world for church and society.
