Herman Bavinck

James Eglinton posts a collection of pictures from the “A Pearl and a Leaven” conference here.

2008.10.03 – Reformed Forum: “Herman Bavinck,” an interview with Dr. Ron Gleason [61:29]. Fast-forward to 26:10 for an excellent introduction to Bavinck. More info or download MP3 (28.2MB). Listen:

The Certainty of Faith (1903, 1980). Translated into English by Harry der Nederlanden. Purchase the book here ($15) or download a free, though imperfect, version of the PDF here (0.5MB).

“Creation or Development,” translated by J. Hendrik de Vries. The Methodist Review (Nov. 1901): 849-874. Download the PDF here.

Herman Bavinck’s article “The Problem of War” was originally published in 1914, translated into English by Stephen Voorwinde and published in the Banner of Truth magazine (July-Aug 1977) pp. 46-53. It has been reissued by permission of the publisher, retypeset, and now presented online (for the first time) as a downloadable PDF. Click over to the free article archive to download.

Special thanks to our friend Steve Burlew and the Banner of Truth staff for their work in making this valuable translated article available online!

If any hermanbavinck.org readers possess the following article I would appreciate a copy to share with the community:

“The Problem of War.” Translated by Stephen Voorwinde. Banner of Truth 166-167 (July-Aug 1977): 46-53

If you possess a copy of this translated article, please leave a comment or send me an email (crede.ut.intelligas [AT] mac [DOT] com)

Thank you!

Tony

New article …

Review of Reformed Dogmatics, vols 1+2, by Mark Garcia (2004). Read it here.

The 1,500 hits on this website on its first day was a great surprise and the level of interest in Bavinck by English readers is encouraging.

I plan to continue utilizing this site to pass along updates so check back often (better yet, subscribe to this blog feed in an RSS reader). I’ll post Bavinck news, notes, and updates as they become available.

And please pass along updates, articles, books, or anything the hermanbavinck.org community could benefit from by leaving a comment or sending along an email (see the “About” tab).

Thanks for reading!

Tony

Scholars gather to grapple with translation of Dutch theologian’s work

by Matt Vande Bunte | The Grand Rapids Press
Saturday September 27, 2008, 5:43 AM

GRAND RAPIDS–Terms like “sanctification” and “presumptive regeneration” were seen with new eyes when scholars at a historic conference discussed some of the finer points of their theological heritage.

They gathered to review that tradition in the context of a long-dead Dutch thinker whose century-old ideas were talked about in the present tense. Herman Bavinck has come alive in English through a 15-year, $130,000 effort of a translation group and its local publisher.

About 200 scholars came to Calvin College last weekend to celebrate the English translation of Bavinck’s 3,000-page “Reformed Dogmatics” and to grapple with his thoughts anew. The fourth and final volume of the work was released this spring.

“They had a dream of bringing this into English — and that’s no small thing,” said James Kinney, director of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group. “We really have to stand in awe of that kind of project. It’s an impressive achievement.

“There’s a sense in which students now have access to really one of the brilliant minds.”

Bavinck was a leading Dutch theologian in late 19th- and early 20th-century Holland, and his ideas have influenced many Reformed churches. But his masterpiece never was translated from Dutch.

So a group of scholars formed the Dutch Reformed Translation Society with a top priority of bringing Bavinck’s “Dogmatics” into English.

“He is very simply, in my judgment, the best statement of Reformed theology since John Calvin,” said James De Jong, society chairman and former president of Calvin Theological Seminary. “This is going to be the kind of work that theologians and studious ministers will go back to for generations. It will be consulted for a long time.

“Interest in him is just going to snowball.”

With representation from Calvin, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Protestant Reformed Seminary, Mid-America Reformed Seminary and Western Theological Seminary, the society completed its work this spring. The English translation now is the basis for bringing Bavinck’s work into Korean, Portuguese, Italian, German and Indonesian.

“We had Korean students (at Calvin) committed to learning Dutch in order to wrestle with Bavinck,” said Calvin seminary professor John Bolt, who edited the translation.

From the United States, Canada and Europe, students and scholars came together on the 100th anniversary of Bavinck’s 1908 Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary to explore the relevance of his thoughts for the church and society at large.

Bolt said Bavinck addressed many theological questions 100 years ago that are still debated today. And his answers weave a common thread through today’s Reformed churches, Bolt said.

“It turns out the hunch that some of us had that Bavinck was a unifying figure is true,” Bolt said. “On this, we do have commonalities. This, we value. This, we treasure.”

Recently Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI hosted the conference: “A Pearl and A Leaven: Herman Bavinck for the Twenty-First Century.”

Steve Carr writes on his experience here.