The Sacrifice of Praise - Herman Bavinck (1854 - 1921)

The Sacrifice of Praise - Herman Bavinck (1854 - 1921)

Translated by John Dolfin (1880 - 1943)

This book is of an intensely practical nature. The subject, as the headings of the twelve chapters indicate, is "Confession." We do not hesitate to say that in practical church life there is still considerable misunderstanding as to confessing Christ. Throughout the book the fundamental significance of the Covenant of Grace with its attendant promises, conditions, and blessings is clearly set forth. In a word, "The Sacrifice of Praise" is a masterpiece on the subject of confessing Christ, both for instruction and comfort to those who intend to unite with the Church and to its members in full communion.

It is our humble and happy task to commend "The Sacrifice of Praise" to our churches, especially to the Reformed Church in America. We can do this most cheerfully because it is our personal conviction that Dr. H. Bavinck was, by the grace of God, the Prince of recent Reformed theologians. (From the Introduction)

Background
Bavinck was born on 13 December 1854 in the town of Hoogeveen in the Netherlands to a German father, Jan Bavinck (1826–1909), who was the minister of theologically conservative, ecclesiastically separatist Christian Reformed Church (Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk). After his high school education, Bavinck first went to the Theological School in Kampen in 1873, but then moved on to Leiden for further training after one year in Kampen. He wrote in his student journal notes that he was motivated to transfer his studies by the preaching of the pastor Johannes Hendricus Donner [nl], who was also ministering in Leiden by that time. He studied under prominent faculties such as Johannes Scholten and Abraham Kuenen, and finally graduated in 1880 from the University of Leiden having completed a dissertation on the ethics of Ulrich Zwingli.

A year later, Bavinck was appointed Professor of Dogmatics at Theological School in Kampen. While serving there, he also assisted his denomination that had formed out of the withdrawal of orthodox Calvinists earlier from the state Hervormde Kerk, a withdrawal movement called the "Afscheiding" (Secession) in its merger with a second and subsequent larger breakaway movement that also left the Hervormde Kerk, this time under the leadership of Abraham Kuyper, a movement called the "Doleantie" (the Complaint: a historical reference to the term used by orthodox Reformed ministers who opposed Arminianism prior to the National Synod of Dordt, 1618–19).


Move to Amsterdam
Amidst all these developments, Bavinck stayed put and pursued his class lectures, research, writing, and publication – making his distinctive mark as an orthodox Calvinist theologian and churchman.

In 1908 he visited the United States and gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Bavinck died on 29 July 1921 in Amsterdam.

Bavinck and Kuyper
Inevitably he has been compared with his contemporary Abraham Kuyper. J. H. Landwehr, Bavinck's first biographer, had this to say of the two: "Bavinck was an Aristotelian, Kuyper had a Platonic spirit. Bavinck was the man of clear concept, Kuyper the man of the fecund idea. Bavinck worked with the historically given; Kuyper proceeded speculatively by way of intuition. Bavinck's was primarily an inductive mind; Kuyper's primarily deductive." One major difference in ideas between Bavinck and Kuyper is formulated largely in theological terms contrasting a doctrine called "Common Grace" with a doctrine called "the Antithesis". Bavinck emphasized Common Grace, while Kuyper emphasized (sometimes severely) the Antithesis. A comparison of the two positions, which came to designate two interwoven and contentious traditions in the GKiN and the neo-Calvinist Christian social movements that flowed from its membership, is presented in Jacob Klapwijk's important work of Reformational philosophy, entitled Bringing into Captivity Every Thought (English, 1986).

Theology
Bavinck's Doctrine of Revelation
Bavinck sensed the open question caused by the subjectivistic tendency of Friedrich Schleiermacher's doctrine of revelation. Deeply concerned with the problem of objectivism and subjectivism in the doctrine of revelation, he employed Schleiermacher’s doctrine of revelation in his own way and regarded the Bible as the objective standard for his theological work. Bavinck also stressed the importance of the church, which forms the Christian consciousness and experience. (Source: Byung Hoon Woo, Herman Bavinck, and Karl Barth)