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Bavinck: A Critical Biography
James Eglinton
Baker Academic (2020). 480 pp.
Rarely can a critical biography make a significant contribution to an academic field of study and appeal to a broad audience. James Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Critical Biography is one of these rare gems as it examines the life and work of the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). For Bavinck scholars, Eglinton’s long-awaited biography proves that it was worth the wait. This is not only because the depth, detail, and thoroughness of Eglinton’s research brings new light to Bavinck’s life, but also due to the way it continues to challenge a long-held assumption in Bavinck studies, namely ‘the two Bavincks’ hypothesis. In his previous work, Eglinton significantly challenged this hermeneutical approach, which bifurcates Bavinck into a dipolar thinker who had an ‘orthodox’ side and a ‘modern’ side, and proposed a new reading of one Bavinck, orthodox and modern, who sought to articulate the historic faith in and for his modern context. This biography continues that project, as Eglinton claims: “My biography has a particular aim: to tell the story of a man whose theologically laced personal narrative explored the possibility of an orthodox life in a changing world” (p. xx). However, while Bavinck scholars will relish examining and exploring Eglinton’s work, especially against the backdrop of previous biographies in Dutch and English, those outside the realm of Bavinck studies will also find much to enjoy in Eglinton’s work. He weaves together the elements of Bavinck’s life into a thought-provoking narrative about what it means to embody a tradition in the midst of a world that “continues to shift beneath one’s feet” (p. 4).
The biography itself is divided into five parts: Roots (Part 1), Student (Part 2), Pastor (Part 3), Professor in Kampen (Part 4), Professor in Amsterdam (Part 5). In each section, Eglinton situates Bavinck’s life within the broader historical context of the seismic changes taking place in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This contextualization is intentional and a crucial aspect of the biography’s approach. Eglinton seeks to tell a story of a man who was engaged and attentive to the changing currents of his day. In Eglington’s biography, Bavinck’s context does not just form a backdrop from which to build a portrait of a detached theologian who could exist within any historical era. Rather, it is the context within which Bavinck’s narrative and contributions come to life.
This approach begins in Part 1: Roots. Highlighting the political, social, ecclesial upheaval that marked Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, Eglinton identifies the major events that shaped Bavinck’s life prior to his birth: the secession of a number of churches from the Dutch National Church in 1834 (Afscheiding), his family (originally from Benthiem, a German town in lower Saxony) joining the seceders, and the Spring of Nations in 1848. The Spring of Nations offered a qualified degree of religious freedom in the Netherlands. Prior to 1848, the Afgescheidenen (“seceders”) lived a clandestine existence and faced state persecution. Post-1848, however, the churches of the secession no longer struggled to simply exist. However, they faced a new question: “how orthodox Reformed Christians should inhabit a late-modern society that (because of religious pluralism) tolerated them while rendering some of the original ideals obsolete and unachievable” (p. 16). According to Eglinton, there was diversity among the seceders as to how to respond to this challenge, and one significant figure in discussions concerning how to live within the new, post-1848 reality was Bavinck’s father and seceder pastor, Jan Bavinck. Contrasting earlier biographies, Eglinton presents a picture of Bavinck’s father and family as part of the seceders who sought and promoted active engagement with the modern world. The implication of this assessment is significant. Rather than presenting Herman Bavinck as a rare abnormality standing against an isolated and walled-off seceder community, it situates him within a stream of seceders that were seeking “to find [their] place in the modern world” (p. 39).
Moving on to Bavinck’s life and work in Part 2: Student, the impact of Eglinton’s contextualization of Bavinck comes to the fore when he challenges one of the most commonly held assumptions about Bavinck’s life: that he shocked his community by switching from the seceder’s Theological School in Kampen to the modern, enlightenment influenced University of Leiden to complete his schooling. Eglinton goes in depth to complexify this picture and demonstrate that while some opposed Bavinck’s shift, there were many who supported his choice. Eglinton also shows that Bavinck’s ties to Kampen were not severed during this period but continued throughout his time in Leiden. Furthermore, Eglinton also argues that Bavinck’s move to Leiden was indicative of a broader trend that after the Spring of Nations the seceder community moved horizontally from a clandestine denomination into the center of Dutch life and vertically from a lower-class existence into the upper echelons of Dutch society. For Eglinton, Bavinck was not only a part of this movement but one of its key representatives.
Eglinton continues to paint this picture of Bavinck moving inward and upward in the Netherlands as he moves into Parts 4 and 5 and explores Bavinck’s professorships the Theological School in Kampen and the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam, as well as his increasing involvement in political and social life of the Netherlands as a part of the Anti-Revolutionary party lead by Abraham Kuyper. Part 3, however, examines Bavinck’s two-year pastorate in Franeker. Still involved in ecclesial and social life in the Netherlands, Part 3 offers an intimate and intricate look at Bavinck as a pastor whose life was filled with the duties and joys of pastoral work but also loneliness and struggle.
Part 3’s exploration of Bavinck’s life is indicative of another key feature of Eglinton’s biography: it moves beyond his writings and public life to explore his friendships, love and family life, and personal responses to public successes and failures. It is within these elements that it is clear that this is no hagiography. Bavinck is presented as a real human being whose life was extraordinary in many ways but ordinary in others. He experienced major heartbreak both in love and in his continued but futile attempts to unify the Theological School in Kampen and the theological faculty of the VU into one institution. His relationship with Kuyper, who is often mentioned in the same breath as Bavinck as leaders of the neo-Calvinist movement, which transitioned from one of adulation and praise to one of respect but also disagreement. He did not rise above his context and life events to exemplify an another-worldly spirituality and non-engaged saint. Eglinton presents him as a man of his time, who had faults and failures alongside of his success as a theologian and leader within the Netherlands.
In sum, Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Critical Biography is a masterful work, situating Bavinck’s life within broader cultural currents in order to demonstrate how Bavinck’s life and work is worth contemporary attention not due to his detachment with the world but because of his thorough engagement with it. It paints an intimate picture of Bavinck, integrating Bavinck’s life and theological vision. Not all readers of the biography will agree with every interpretation Eglinton makes of Bavinck’s life—especially those who affirm previous accounts of Bavinck’s life. But all readers will be enriched by the extensive scholarship, well-written prose, and fascinating portrayal of Bavinck, who as Eglinton claims, was “an orthodox Calvinist, a modern European, and a man of science” (291).
Gayle Doornbos is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Dordt University. She has a PhD in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College. She is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
