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Bredenhof on Bavinck and

Bredenhof on Bavinck and "Psychology from the Bible"

The following review was written by Wes Bredenhof on the book Biblical and Religious Psychology by Herman Bavinck (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing, 2024). The review was originally published in Clarion 73.16 (Year End 2024). Read more of Bredenhof's book reviews here

 

Reading the title of this review, you may be thinking: what does psychology have to do with the Bible? If so, it’s likely because you associate psychology with a secular social science dealing with the human mind and behaviour. Because so much psychology is based on humanistic foundations, it may seem like it can’t have much, if anything, to do with the Bible. Think again. In a university you could take an anthropology course. But did you know you could also take an anthropology course in seminary? In that context, anthropology is an area of systematic theology dealing with the study of the human race – what does the Bible say about it? Similarly here, Herman Bavinck is approaching the study of the human mind and human behaviour from an explicitly biblical perspective. What does the Bible say about our psychology? 

The author was and remains one of the giants of Reformed theology. Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was first a professor in Kampen and then later in Amsterdam at the Free University. He was a prodigious writer, authoring hundreds of articles and dozens of books. We’re experiencing a surge of interest in Bavinck in the English-speaking world and more and more of his books are now finally appearing in English. We can be thankful for that because, though Bavinck has been dead for over a hundred years, he still has a lot to offer us today.         

The chapters of Biblical and Religious Psychology were originally written as articles published in a periodical for Christian teachers. As such, some of the material is directly about biblical child psychology, but much of it is more broadly applicable. The book has a helpful introduction from Dr. John Bolt, who taught at Calvin Seminary for nearly three decades. Biblical and Religious Psychology often mentions figures and books obscure to us now – but the editor (Gregory Parker) has helped us along with many informative footnotes throughout.

According to Bavinck, Scripture enriches our understanding of psychology in three ways. First, it helps us to know man as he is “in his origin, essence, and destiny.”  Next, it introduces us to man’s soul-life like no other book. Finally, “it never does all this in abstract conceptions, but it makes us see everything in the full reality of life” (p.16). 

The book proceeds in two main sections. The first considers the “structure of human psychology on the basis of Scripture’s teaching about body, soul, spirit, and will” (biblical psychology). The second part gives attention to the “more theological arena of the soul’s relation to God. How does the fact that God created us in his image, in relation to him, affect our human psychology?” (religious psychology) (p.xxxv).

Bavinck’s exploration of what Scripture says on these things is worthwhile in its own right. However, others (like myself) may also be interested in the historical value of this work. For example, there’s a chapter on “The Heredity of Sin.”  Bavinck wrote, “Heredity remains a mystery in the fullest sense” (p.143). While DNA was discovered in 1869, it wasn’t until long after Bavinck’s death in 1921 that its function in genetics became more clearly understood. There are other examples that betray the age of this work, but not its value.

There are two points I’d like to briefly interact with from Biblical and Religious Psychology. In chapter 8 and elsewhere, Bavinck works with the venerable Reformed distinction between the image of God in man broadly considered and more narrowly considered. I agree with that distinction. What surprised me, however, was his categorical assertion that Lutherans either reject or de-emphasize this distinction. He paints with a broad brush here. However, in his Christian Dogmatics, Lutheran theologian Francis Pieper points out that this distinction was held by Quenstedt, Baier, “and others.”

The other point has to do with the source of general revelation as discussed in chapter 9. He writes that saying with the Belgic Confession that we know God through nature “is not incorrect, but it is currently incomplete and prone to misunderstanding.” He says that “nature” formerly “had a much richer and broader meaning that it does today.” Bavinck asserts that “also culture and history are part of the means by which the invisible attributes of God are known…God reigns even in this age; nature, culture, and history are means through which he speaks to us even more loudly than in the past” (p.206). I’m not sure that there is an earlier broader sense of “nature” in Reformed theology. Bavinck didn’t provide any evidence to support his claim and my sources don’t seem to support it. I checked his Reformed Dogmatics to see if he said more about it there. He did (vol.1, chapter 10). However, there he also didn’t give references and, interestingly, he didn’t include culture. I don’t believe the Bible teaches that culture is a form of general revelation. I bring this up only because so much mischief results when culture is considered as a form of revelation. If science is considered part of culture (which it should be), then science becomes a form of revelation. If entertainment is considered part of culture (obviously it is), then TV shows, movies, and pop songs are forms of revelation. Some “neo-Calvinists” in our day argue for exactly that and I wonder if the seed of that development might be here in Bavinck.         

Bavinck is one of my favourite theologians. I love him for always being thought-provoking, but also for (almost always) grounding his thinking in Scripture. He was one of those men who embodied copiousness – he was filled to overflowing with the reading he’d done. He read broadly and deeply on all kinds of subjects and this book reflects it. There might be more scientifically up-to-date treatments of psychology from a biblical perspective, but Bavinck’s relevance will no doubt abide for many years to come.


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