Biography
Herman Bavinck was born on December 13, 1854, in Hoogeveen in the Netherlands. His father, Jan Bavinck, was a minister in a small Reformed denomination that had separated from the state church. Herman grew up in a pious home where the Bible was read and prayer was regular. From an early age he was serious, studious and quiet. He loved learning and was drawn to the questions of theology.
He studied first at the seminary in Kampen, which belonged to his father's church. He soon wanted to learn more of the new thought of his age and moved to Leiden University, which was then under the influence of modern theology. He was an outsider there, a young Reformed man in a school that did not share his faith. Yet he did well and earned his doctorate in 1880 with a study of the ethics of Zwingli. He was courteous with his teachers and remained steady in his convictions. He had the rare ability to understand a position fully and to answer it with fairness.
He returned to Kampen to teach. For nearly twenty years he taught dogmatics there, and in those years he prepared his great work. In 1902 he moved to the Free University of Amsterdam to succeed Abraham Kuyper, the founder of the university and a towering figure in Dutch life. Bavinck remained there until his retirement in 1920. He was a different man from Kuyper. Kuyper was a bold public leader. Bavinck was shy and reserved, and he preferred the study. Together they shaped the movement known as neo-Calvinism.
His masterpiece is the Reformed Dogmatics, which he published in four volumes between 1895 and 1901 and revised in the following decade. It treats the whole range of Christian doctrine, from the knowledge of God to the last things. It is deeply learned. He drew on the church fathers, the medieval theologians, the Reformers and modern thinkers, and he weighed them against Scripture. He wrote with reverence and clarity. He did not write to show his learning. He wrote to praise the God of the Bible and to strengthen the church. The work has been translated into English and is now studied around the world.
He also wrote more accessible works. Our Reasonable Faith, first published in 1909, set out the teaching of the Christian faith for ordinary readers in a devotional spirit. He wrote on education, on psychology and on the place of the Christian in society. He believed that the Christian faith has something to say about all of life and that grace restores nature. He taught that God's revelation reaches into every sphere of human activity.
He took part in public life. He served in the upper house of the Dutch parliament from 1911 and pressed for the rights of Christian schools and for a role for faith in the nation. He was also a loyal churchman who cared about his congregation. He was married to Johanna Schippers, and they had a daughter. He was known to be modest. Friends said that he gave credit to others and did not seek honor.
He had weaknesses that he did not hide. He felt the tension between his scholarly work and his pastoral concern, and he admitted that the study sometimes drew him away from the simple life of prayer. He wrote often of the need for the believer to live in the presence of God and to guard against a faith that is only in the head. He felt that theology is for the church and is done on the knees.
He died on July 29, 1921, in Amsterdam, at the age of sixty-six. His work was long overlooked in the English-speaking world but has since been recovered, and many see it as one of the great achievements in Reformed theology. His life shows how a mind trained to the highest level may remain humble before the Word of God.