The Last Things, by Herman Bavinck
Reviewed by Harry Zekveld
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 6, no. 4 (October 1997)
Bavinck, Herman, The Last Things: Hope for This World and the Next. John Bolt, ed., John Vriend, trans. Grand Rapids, U.S.A., and Carlisle, U.K.: Baker Books and Paternoster Press, 1996, 205 pp. (Note: Since the editor approached me too late in the day to provide an extensive review of this book, I simply agreed to introduce it as the first fruit of the project to translate Gereformeerde Dogmatiek [Reformed Dogmatics].)
The Last Things is the first installment of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society’s initial project—the complete, definitive translation of Bavinck’s four-volume magnum opus Reformed Dogmatics (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek). It is Volume Four of that work. “The DRTS was formed in 1994 by a group of business-people and professionals, pastors, and seminary professors, representing five different Reformed denominations, to sponsor the translation and facilitate the publication in English of classic Reformed theological and religious literature published in the Dutch language” (Preface, p. 7). We might add that the DRTS have favored us with a recent graphite sketch of Herman Bavinck on the opening page.
The name Herman Bavinck brings back childhood memories of looking up at Bavinck’s work De Algemeene Genade high on my father’s bookshelf. The neo-Calvinist thinking of this Dutch Reformed Theologian was introduced to me by my college professors. But only as I read through his translated works Our Reasonable Faith [Magnalia Dei, 1909; trans. by Henry Zylstra] and The Doctrine of God [Vol. II of Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 3rd ed., 1918; trans. by William Hendriksen] in seminary did I become an admirer of this great Reformed thinker. Born in 1854, and raised in the experimental Calvinism of the Dutch Second Reformation (the Nadere Reformatie), Bavinck went on to face full-blown modernism in his studies at the University of Leiden; then to teach theology at the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Churches (Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken) at Kampen in 1882; and finally, in 1902—as Abraham Kuyper left the Free University for a time to take on the Prime Ministership of the Netherlands—to join the faculty as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam where he served until his death in 1921.
That Bavinck is a highly valuable teacher for every student of Reformed theology is clear from the things that are said of him. Editor John Bolt, who has enhanced this book with a brief introduction to Herman Bavinck, regards him as one who “represents the concluding high point of some four centuries of remarkably productive Dutch Reformed theological reflection” (Editor’s Introduction, p. 9). The article on Herman Bavinck in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Walter Elwell, ed.) praises his “broad grasp of the history of theology and his notable philosophical capacity.” Most notable is the fact that Amsterdam’s prince of theologians is praised by Princeton’s own great theologian, B. B. Warfield. In a somewhat critical review of Bavinck’s The Certainty of Faith (De Zekerheid des Geloofs, 1901), Warfield named him “a brilliant [representative]” and “a shining ornament” of his school of thought. “We must not close [this review]” wrote Warfield, “without emphasizing the delight we take in Dr. Bavinck’s writings. In them extensive learning, sound thinking, and profound religious feeling are smelted intimately together into a product of singular charm” (Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. II, edited by John. E Meeter, p. 123).
The reasons for the high praises that others have sung about Herman Bavinck are all clearly displayed in The Last Things.
The Last Things is divided into three sections: 1) The Intermediate State, 2) The Return of Christ, and 3) The Consummation. In each area of eschatology Bavinck fixes our focus upon the reign of Christ as Creator and Mediator whose redemption will advance until all creation has been restored to its full splendor in His Parousia. “Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon the dying ground, produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so, too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the bondage of decay” (p. 160).
That the reign of Christ is for Bavinck the real subject of eschatology, rather than sanctification, glorification, and tribulation is seen in his statement: “Eschatology....is rooted in Christology and is itself Christology, the teaching of the final, complete triumph of Christ and his kingdom over all his enemies” (122). How necessary is this perspective for an evangelical world caught up in the last-days madness!
Bavinck interacts ably with philosophy, church history, Roman Catholic theology, chiliasm and modernism, and consistently rests squarely upon the testimony of Scripture. “[I]f it is not in Scripture, theology is not free to advocate it” (p. 62). Another closely related defining mark of this book is the call to exercise “scriptural reserve.” For example, Bavinck carefully steers us through the subject of the intermediate state with constant fidelty to his own opening warning: “The history of the doctrine of the intermediate state shows that it is hard for theologians and people in general to stay within the limits of Scripture and not to be wiser than they ought to be” (p. 44). We are also blessed in this work by brief but careful exegesis of passages such as sections of Matthew 24, Romans 9-11, and Revelation 20.
There is one caution to be made, however. We wish that Bavinck would have been more definite in his opposition to universalism when he comes to the matter of the salvation of pagans and of infants outside of the covenant who die in infancy. What about Romans 1:18ff, 3:10-21, and 1 Cor. 7:14? Without facing these and other passages crucial to this discussion, he neither affirms nor denies their salvation. We would add, however, that his opposition to universalism is definitely strong in Chapter 6, “The Day of the Lord.”
We are grateful to the Dutch Reformed Translation Society for making this volume available to the English-speaking Church, and hope that it will serve to bring us closer to Scripture and also to one another as members of the long-standing British and Continental, Princeton and Amsterdam Reformed traditions.
Born of Dutch immigrant parents in Canada, Harry Zekveld studied at Redeemer College in Ontario, and then at the Mid-America Reformed Seminary which was then located in Iowa. He is now serving as pastor of the Cornerstone Orthodox Reformed Church in Sanborn, Iowa, a member church of the United Reformed Churches of North America.