God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology. By Nathaniel Gray Sutanto

Abstract

Sutanto’s detailed study of the theological epistemology of Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) examines Bavinck’s ‘characterization of science and knowledge as a “single organism” and the concomitant claim that the placement of theology into a purely ecclesial sphere is to compromise the “organism of science” (organisme der wetenschap)’ (p. 2). After Bavinck finished his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics (hereafter RD), he turned to several works which examined the scientific character of theology and the issue of how human knowing is possible as well as the relationship between theology and other sciences. His Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary (1908), published as the Philosophy of Revelation, was an important treatment which argued, as Sutanto notes, that ‘divine revelation rests behind every area of study’ (p. 4). His underlying axioms were that God’s revelation means theology can be scientific; and that theology can and should be related to academic disciplines found...