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Revisiting Bavinck on Hegel: Providence, reason, and the unsublatable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2022

Shao Kai Tseng  and
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto
Shao Kai Tseng*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto
Affiliation:
Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: stseng@zju.edu.cn
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Abstract

Herman Bavinck's reception of the organic motif has become in recent years the central locus for discussing the means by which the unity of his thought may be recognised. This article provides a critical reading of Bavinck on Hegel on the locus of providence for the purpose of contributing to the ongoing discussion that identifies the unity of Bavinck's thought not in his confessional self in simple opposition against the philosophies of his day, but rather in characterising Bavinck as an eclectic, orthodox and modern theologian. To this end this essay moves in three steps. First, we provide an analysis that showcases the nuanced points of contact between Bavinck and Hegel on providence. Second, the essay homes in on the specific ways in which the two thinkers diverge on the Creator–creature relationship. Finally, we close the essay by sketching the salient dogmatic and philosophical implications of the preceding analysis.

Keywords

Herman BavinckG. W. F. HegelidealismorganicismprovidenceReformed theology
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 221 - 234
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Indeed, talk of ‘two poles’ that were not posited as a duality in the older Dutch scholarship led Anglophone interpreters to talk of ‘two Bavincks’ – a duality between his ‘orthodox’ and ‘modern’ self. See Veenhof, Jan, Revelatie en Inspiratie (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1968), pp. 108–11Google Scholar, 267–8; for the two-Bavincks claim, see e.g. Bolt, John, ‘Grand Rapids between Kampen and Amsterdam’, Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003), pp. 263–80Google Scholar; Yarnell, Malcolm, The Formation of Christian Doctrine (Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing, 2007), pp. 49–59Google Scholar.

2 See esp. Mattson, Brian, Restored to our Destiny: Eschatology and the Image of God in Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Eglinton, James, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck's Organic Motif (London: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar.

3 Brock, Cory C., Orthodox Yet Modern: Herman Bavinck's Use of Schleiermacher (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020)Google Scholar.

4 Sutanto, N. Gray, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology (London: Bloomsbury, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chs 5–6.

5 Pass, Bruce, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentricism in Herman Bavinck (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Mattson, Restored to our Destiny, p. 50. See also Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, pp. 66–7.

7 See esp. Brock, Cory and Sutanto, N. Gray, ‘Herman Bavinck's Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness, and Theological Epistemology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 70/3 (2017), pp. 310–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 John Webster, ‘On the Theology of Providence’, in Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip Ziegler (eds), The Providence of God (London: T&T Clark, 2009), p. 161. Webster continues on the same page: ‘Dogmatics has a twofold task: an analytic-expository task, in which it attempts orderly conceptual representation of the content of the Christian gospel as it is laid out in the scriptural witness; and a polemical-apologetic task in which it explores the justification and value of Christian truth-claims.’ It is worth emphasising, however, that Bavinck's goal isn't reducible to apologetics, nor is he merely exploring the value of Christian truth-claims. His goal was in a sense more ambitious: he set it to demonstrate the persistence and inevitability of Christian claims – one can't get away from those claims, even in the so-called non-dogmatic sciences.

9 Barth, Karl, Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1 of The Göttingen Dogmatics, ed. Reiffen, Hannelotte, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), p. 151Google Scholar. Cf. Barth, Karl, Unterricht in der Chrisliche Religion, vol. 1 (Zurich: TVZ, 1985), p. 185Google Scholar.

10 Baark, Sigurd, The Affirmations of Reason: On Karl Barth's Speculative Theology (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Howard Kainz, ‘Hegel, Providence, and the Philosophy of History’, Hegel-Jahrbuch (1995), p. 184.

12 The extent of Barth's appeal to and criticism of Hegel has been a topic of intense debate in the secondary literature. For a recent assessment of the debate, see Shao Kai Tseng, ‘Barth on Actualistic Ontology’, in George Hunsinger and Keith Johnson (eds), Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), pp. 739–51. Cf. Tseng, Shao Kai, ‘Karl Barths aktualistische Ontologie: Ihre Substanzgrammatik des Seins und Prozessgrammatik des Werdens’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 61 (2019), pp. 32–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (hereafter RD), 4 vols, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003–8), vol. 2, p. 43.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, ed. and trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 10.

19 Dean Moyar, ‘Absolute Knowledge and the Ethical Conclusion of the Phenomenology’, in Dean Moyar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Hegel (Oxford: OUP, 2017), p. 167.

20 Hegel makes an all-important distinction between ‘concept’ (Begriff) and ‘representation’ (Vorstellung). Representational thinking is a form of understanding associated with sensibility, while conceptual thinking is to grasp the rational essence of something. Anglophone scholars often use ‘Concept’ with a capital C to designate the all-encompassing Begriff, the consummately rational, i.e. Reason itself as the Absolute, which Hegel equates with God. For Bavinck's use of these terms, see N. Gray Sutanto, ‘Neo-Calvinism on General Revelation: A Dogmatic Sketch’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 20/4 (2018), pp. 495–516.

21 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, 2nd edn, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York: Macmillan, 1931), p. 76.

22 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 15.

23 Kainz, ‘Hegel, Providence, and the Philosophy of History’, p. 184.

24 Ibid., p. 185.

25 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, p. 517.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 521.

30 Ibid. See also Sutanto, God and Knowledge, pp. 127–33.

31 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), B407.

32 See Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Edna Hong and Howard Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 38–42.

33 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, p. 521.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Michael Rosen, Hegel's Dialectic and Its Criticism (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), p. 78.

37 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, p. 166.

38 For a detailed exposition of Bavinck's treatment of Hegel, Feuerbach and Strauss, see Shao Kai Tseng, G. W. F. Hegel (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2018), pp. 111–16.

39 Bavinck, RD, vol. 1, p. 256.

40 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 435.

41 For the implications of this for Bavinck's doctrine of scripture, see Bruce Pass, ‘Upholding Sola Scriptura Today: Some Unturned Stones in Herman Bavinck's Doctrine of Inspiration’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 20/4 (2018), pp. 517–36.

42 Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, p. 66.

43 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 612.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., p. 604.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., pp. 606–9. Hence, Bavinck explicitly rejects occasionalism: ‘Creation and providence are not identical. If providence meant a creating anew every moment, creatures would also have to be produced out of nothing every moment. In that case, the continuity, connectedness, and “order of causes” would be totally lost, and there would be no development in history.’ Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 607.

49 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 609. Earlier (RD, vol. 2, p. 373), Bavinck argued that God's ‘decree is the “womb” of all reality’.

50 Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. and ed. N. Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton and Cory Brock (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), p. 51. See Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, 2 vols (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1862), vol. 1, pp. 5–6; vol. 2, p. 461.

51 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 610.

52 ‘Bij het word moet de daad, bij de generatie de creatie, bij de wijsheid het besluit Gods komen, om aan wat eeuqig als idee in het Goddelijk bewustzijn bestond ook een reel bestaan te schenken.’ Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing (Kampen: Kok, 1913), p. 56. On the next page, Bavinck argues that the older saying forma dat esse rei (the form gives existence to the thing) must be understood biblically and not Hellenistically, as forms have no independent existence and cannot serve as the efficient cause of created things, but rather are brought into existence solely by the will of God. On this, he cites Johann Heinrich Alsted, Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta, vol. 1 (Herbonae Nassoviorum: Corvinus Erben, 1630), p. 615.

53 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, p. 610.

54 Ibid., p. 435.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., p. 333.

58 Ibid.

59 See Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, p. 89. On the implications of this claim to the doctrines of original sin and the image of God, see N. Gray Sutanto, ‘Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 18/2 (2016), pp. 174–90.

60 Bavinck, RD, vol. 2, pp. 435–6.

61 ‘Dan alleen komt én de eenheid én de verschiedenheid, zoowel het zijn als het worden zijn recht, als wij de mechanische en dynamische wereldbeschouwing door de organische vervangen. Volgens deze is de wereld geen eentonig eenerlei, maar zij bevat eene volheid van zijn, eene rijke afwisseling van verschijnselen, eene bonte veelheid van scheselen.’ Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing, p. 50.

62 Ibid.

63 For treatments on how Bavinck related this organicism to the natural sciences, see Abraham Flipse, Christelijke wetenschap: Nederlandse rooms-katolieken en gereformeerden over de natuurwetenschap, 1880–1940 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), pp. 97–103. Also see his ‘The Origins of Creationism in the Netherlands: The Evolution Debate among Twentieth-Century Dutch Neo-Calvinists’, Church History 81 (2012), pp. 104–47 (esp. pp. 112–16). Unlike Flipse's more historically oriented contributions, however, this essay focuses more specifically on Bavinck's use of the doctrine of providence.

64 Ximian Xu, ‘Herman Bavinck's “Yes” and Karl Barth's “No”: Constructing a Dialectic-in-Organic Approach to the Theology of General Revelation’, Modern Theology 35/2 (2019), pp. 323–51; N. Gray Sutanto, ‘Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God’, Harvard Theological Review 111/1 (2018), pp. 115–34; N. Gray Sutanto, ‘Neo-Calvinism on General Revelation’; Cory Brock, ‘Between Demonization and Dependence: Bavinck's Appropriations of Schleiermacher’, Ad Fontes (2018), pp. 1–7; Bruce Pass, ‘Herman Bavinck and the Problem of New Wine in Old Wineskins’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 17/4 (2015), pp. 432–49.

65 Hegel, Science of Logic, pp. 7–8.

66 For an elaboration of this, see N. Gray Sutanto, ‘The Mistake of Idealism in Organic Knowing: The Theological Epistemology of Herman Bavinck’, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2017.

67 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), p. 133.