Essays on Religion, Science, and Society

Herman Bavinck, the premier theologian of the Kuyper-inspired, neo-Calvinistic revival in the late nineteenth-century Netherlands, is an important voice in the development of Protestant theology. Essays on Religion, Science, and Society offers an outworking of Bavinck's systematic theology as presented in his acclaimed Reformed Dogmatics and engages enduring issues from a biblical and theological perspective. The work presents his mature reflections on issues relating to ethics, education, politics, psychology, natural science and evolution, aesthetics, and philosophy of religion. This capstone of Bavinck's distinguished career, and his most significant remaining untranslated work, is now available in English for the first time."I have long admired Bavinck as a major systematic theologian, but in these essays I discovered a Bavinck I never knew. He moves easily--and brilliantly--through adolescent psychology, conceptions of the unconscious, Islam, social contract theory, evolutionary thought, philology, and aesthetics, to name only a few of a broad set of topics. Here an amazing nineteenth-century Calvinist mind addresses with much wisdom a twenty-first-century intellectual agenda!"--Richard J. Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary"This volume of essays demonstrates that good theology is not restricted to private matters of personal piety and faith but has an essential public dimension. The Triune God, who saves us through the work of Christ and incorporates us into the body of Christ, the new people of God, by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, is the same God who is Creator of heaven and earth. . . . It is the insistence on taking creation seriously as God's revelation without in any way diminishing the necessity of biblical revelation as the key to understanding it that is the hallmark of Bavinck's writing on matters of religion, education, science, and society."--John Bolt, from the editor's introduction"Bavinck had a thoroughly disciplined mind, yet with the heart of a child. . . . All his teaching, all his preaching, all his writing was shot through and through with the richness of divine grace as revealed in Christ. . . . His mentality was marvelous. Few men have a mind as adaptable as his. He might have excelled in almost any branch of study. A wonderful linguist, a leading star in the field of dogmatics, great as a philosopher, an authority in pedagogy, wonderfully human in his contact with everyday life, and tenderly moving when he touched the Christian experience--he was indeed gifted above ten thousands."--Henry Elias Dosker, from "Herman Bavinck: A Eulogy"Bolt, John is the author of 'Essays on Religion, Science, and Society', published 2008 under ISBN 9780801032417 and ISBN 0801032415.