Personality and Worldview

J. H. Bavinck

Reviewed by: Daniel Schrock

Personality and Worldview, by J. H. Bavinck. Crossway, 2023. Hardcover, 208 pages, $30.68 (Amazon). Reviewed by OP minister Daniel Schrock.

In American Reformed circles, one can presently speak the name ‘Bavinck’ without much need for differentiation. The day may soon come, however, when a mention of the surname will elicit the question, ‘Which Bavinck?’ The translation of this book moves the dial on that closer.

Johan Herman Bavinck was the nephew of the more renowned Bavinck. But unlike his uncle the dogmatician, J. H. Bavinck was primarily a missiologist. And though he is not merely an intellectual doppelganger of his uncle, one can detect his deep influence upon his nephew’s thought as a synthetic thinker who prized organic holism.

As Timothy Keller observes in his foreword, Bavinck’s treatment of the notion of a worldview avoids the concerns of those who charge the concept with being too rationalistic, too simplistic, too individualistic, and too triumphalist. In Bavinck’s handling, worldview is not a stale diagram of propositions merely to be mapped out on a chalkboard; it is to be wedded to the dynamism of the inner life of personalities. Hence the title.

Now, readers should be warned that this book is likely not to find its way into headlining for many small groups. Bavinck’s treatment of the Western philosophical tradition is detailed, and the average churchgoer (even in the OPC) will probably not have an appetite for his journeys into the thought world of Hume, Spinoza, and Kant. This is the work of an academic who was deeply acquainted with the Western philosophical tradition. And, to add a bit more flavor, it is also the work of one showing equal measure of acquaintance with the Eastern tradition. But if a reader does have the kind of intellectual proclivities Bavinck assumes of his audience, they will discover this book is a tour de force.

He distinguishes between world-visions as tacit, pre-theoretical perspectives, and worldviews, which are more rigorous theoretical attempts at grasping objective truth upon which to build a worthy life. In this perspective, a worldview is an instrument for conquering the self and bringing it in line with truth. Indeed, the principal text upon which Bavinck rests this project is John 8:32, ‘The truth will set you free.’

Bavinck takes the reader through a sampling of major categorizations of worldviews and the underlying personalities who construct them. Yet at the end of each, he shows how they all manage to shatter authentic personality. This is what he understands sin to do in its essence, break the harmony of personality. His conclusion proffers the gospel as the only worldview that does not descend into this discord. Rather, it lifts man out from his attempts to construct worldviews that always amount to futile performances in human achievement. It gives him instead the truth that sets him free, that liberates and restores his personality via the sovereign grace of God.

Experts in the intellectual systems Bavinck treats along the way will undoubtedly find ways to quibble with his characterizations. Notwithstanding, this new translation has retrieved for English readers a way of deploying the concept of worldview that is compelling.