The Idea of a Philosophy of Revelation 1

Overview of the Book and Chapter 1

Today, I decided to post my summary and reflection on Herman Bavinck’s book, The Philosophy of Revelation. This book was published in 1953. It contains 9 topics:

• The Idea of a Philosophy of Revelation
• Revelation and Philosophy
• Revelation and Nature
• Revelation and History
• Revelation and Religion
• Revelation and Christianity
• Revelation and Religious Experience
• Revelation and Culture and
• Revelation and the Future

The book was originally organized as a series of “Stone Lectures” at Princeton Theological Seminary for the academic year of 1908 and 1909. As you see, it took 45 years before these lectures were published as a book. The reason why I want to share the content of this book in the net is because of my experience in higher education and in social networks. There I find numerous ideas are claimed to be recent but as I read Bavinck, they are considered “things of the past.” And I am also surprised that in my initial reading of Herman Bavinck, most of his ideas are either unheard or for unknown reason are ignored.

The message of Herman Bavinck has been with us for almost a century. I find most of the postmodern questions that I have been hearing have already been answered but the answers I think, like the publication of his lectures, have taken a very long journey to reach our time. This shows that there are situations that an idea needs long period of time before it reaches the public arena coming from an isolated beginning.

The book has 349 pages. The first chapter has 28 pages. I decided to write a summary of it and my personal reflection and divided it into 4 parts for readability. It has 7 sub topics:

• Recent or primitive
• Two types of Protestantism
• Deism, Revolution and Evolution
• Darwin and Marx
• Return to Hegelian Idealism
• Monism and the Persistence of Supranaturalism
• The Biblical Idea of Revelation

Recent or Primitive?

The chapter opens by mentioning the name of an Assyrian scholar, Hugo Winckler who argues that in the entire history of humanity, there are only two general worldviews. Bavinck calls these two worldviews as “supranatural” and “empirico-scientific.”

I understand supranatural as a set of beliefs and perspective in life beyond the realm of nature. Empirico-scientific on the other hand is a set of beliefs and perspective in life, which confines itself within the realm of nature. The first worldview is considered “unscientific” and “baseless”. The second worldview is widely accepted as superior than the first. However, if my understanding of Bavinck is accurate, I think the belief about the superiority of the second worldview was considered a thing of the past in the academic arena and we are now seeing again a resurgence of the supranatural worldview.

It upsets me every time I encounter people in the social network ridiculing Christianity as a set of fables and that people who believe in it are considered “primitives.” They do this in the name of “reason” and “science” and claim to uphold the most recent ideas. However, reading Bavinck shows me that the claim of this people is not accurate. Though Bavinck gave this lecture almost a century ago and was published as a book more than 50 years ago, it only shows that the kind of ideas claimed to be recent are in fact outdated. And this also tells us that the ideas claimed to be “primitive” are actually the ideas that we have right now most especially in the so-called post-modern age.

 Two Types of Protestantism

Humanity from the beginning of its history is claimed to be supranatural in its worldview. It is only in the last 200 years that the foundation of this old worldview has been replaced by the empirico-scientific worldview.

Christianity did not change this old worldview not even the Reformation. Both Romanism and liberalism, says Bavinck charged Reformation as responsible for this transition due to its emphasis on freedom. Bavinck clearly distinguishes here between two kinds of freedom – the freedom of Christianity and the freedom of Revolution. They are not one and the same.

Those who charged Reformation as the cause of the transition in worldview also failed to differentiate between two types of Protestantism and the influence of Reformation from Rationalism. The old Protestantism inspired by Erasmus is different from the new Protestantism led by Luther. The old Protestantism as part of 16^th century Renascence had finally come into maturity in the 18^th century during the so-called Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. It is this version of Protestantism, which is responsible for the transition from the supranaturalistic worldview into the empirico-scientific worldview.

Bavinck cites Ernst Troeltsch who acknowledges that the new Protestantism in the name of Reformation modified the old worldview. But this is done in a way that the Reformation enriched the old worldview. It did not build a new foundation but still maintained the supranatural structure. Bavinck explains that Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin did not change this structure for these reformers were faithful children of the Middle Ages.

Reference: Bavinck, Herman. The Philosophy of Revelation. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1953.