Herman Bavinck‘s Use of Friedrich Schleiermacher

[Music] welcome to christ the center your weekly conversation of reformed theology if i'm not mistaken this is episode number 676. my name is camden bucy i'm here in gray's lake illinois and of course i'm excited and delighted to be back with everyone today to talk about reformed theology and today we're going to be talking about hermann bobink once again and we have with us one of our main panelists and uh the president of the board of reform forum here who also serves as pastor primarily pastor of south austin opc in south austin texas welcome back jim it's good to be here camden yeah thanks for taking the time out and joining us today uh we also have with us welcoming back to the program he's been on several times before and i couldn't be happier to have him again we have with us dr corey brock who serves as a minister of young adults in college at first presbyterian church in jackson mississippi as well as a lecturer in christian thought at belhaven university and also does some things over at rts teaching some electives welcome back corey it's so good to see you today yeah thanks for having me really glad to be back yeah well uh we've had you on before to talk uh about bob inc we're going to be picking back up with that today but we have some really great news uh it wasn't too long ago a few months ago i received my hard copy of your dissertation now revised into a book form uh here published by lexum press orthodox yet modern hermann bovink's use of friedrich schleiermacher uh jim has a special place in his heart for lexum and his uh dissertation on bart was eventually published in uh by lex and press and lexum's been putting out a lot of interesting and heavy hitting studies over the last couple years they've really poured a lot of resources and and not just money but a lot of effort and time into advancing uh christian scholarship and particularly reformed and uh and more reformed leaning evangelical scholarship in this way and this is a tremendous addition to this study here the series is studies in historical and systematic theology this is a hefty book looking forward to talking about it today uh before we get started perhaps there's a few things uh to mention even though uh we've been we've been packing up a lot of uh recordings and so we've been quite ahead of schedule other than what has been but just to remind people uh about a few things if you'd like to stay in touch with what we're up to you can head on over to reformedforum.org and there you'll find information and ways in which to subscribe and get notified about uh goings-on i really want to point people to the email newsletter and if you haven't subscribed to that we try to put out just maybe two or three updates uh a month about various things that we have going on at reformed forum and one of them is the the print newsletter and uh if you sign up there you can also head over to the website at reformforum.org newsletter and sign up uh to get a a complimentary copy whenever new issues come out we're doing two of those a year uh the the second issue came out uh toward the end of october and uh when march comes rolling around again we will have our third issue and we hope to expand it so if you'd like to get on that list and get a free copy in the mail at least to us addresses then you can sign up for free online and uh even if you're not in the us you can also sign up for the email newsletter and you'll get a free pdf copy in your email inbox so that's one thing i wanted to remind people of and let people know as well as uh all of the online courses and if it hasn't been released already again we're out of sync here with the what are we diachronic d i don't know what's going on here but in terms of podcast time release time and the time i'm living it's uh it's a little bit different but we will have the second uh vantil course available online hopefully by the end of the year so if it's not out there already uh we're doing everything we can to get it out there by the end of 2020 so take a look at that and rolling on into 2021 it's another big year for bobbin because if i'm not mistaken that was the 100th anniversary of his death and uh we want to uh continue to celebrate his life and his scholarship and uh looking to do uh so at least to shed some more light on the man herman bobink and uh all the good work that he did that's what we're gonna be doing today talking about this book orthodox yet modern now jim's you know going to hear this title and he knows exactly where you got that title right jim what was the first thing you thought when you heard the title of corey's book orthodox yet modern i thought about mccormick's book yeah and that was intentional right corey can you tell us a bit about that the the play on titles here and uh the reason for that yeah well you know i first noticed it just reading in carl bart's scholarship and saw mccormack's title orthodoxy in modern and mccormack has a thesis in that book about bart and schleiermacher and uses the title orthodox in modern to relate uh bart and schleiermacher and i realized while reading it while doing research and into bob inc that uh exactly the reverse was true in in some way of bobby of bobbington what bruce says of bart um in regards to orthodox modern relations so uh yeah that's that's exactly right i think i even opened opened this book up with a reference to mccormack's uh title so sure do you revisit that toward the conclusion that that's that's definitely intentional but it's interesting to think of those two relating because often we would think of orthodoxy and modernism as being mutually exclusive and and contradictory and that's really would like to begin uncovering these terms but i suppose even before we get into that big enormous question which is really the subject of the entire book i would like to ask justin and re revisit a bit of some of the material we talked we spoke with james uh eglinton about if you people are watching the video you can see over my shoulder uh james's uh biography the new critical biography of herman bovinc which is tremendous uh but also uh in dr eglinton's previous work uh trinity has organism he's um addressing what has been called the two bovine hypothesis corey would you be willing to revisit that subject as as we set the stage here for your conversation and i think it helps people understand a bit of the state of recent bavinkian scholarship and perhaps a different and better way to look at it yeah sure so the idea uh is that bobbin creators previous bobbing scholars particularly in the netherlands and then in north america in the middle of the 20th century started talking about there being uh two bobbins and the two bob inks is a reference to opening up bobbing's corpus and finding places in his corpus that read in a quite confessionally unsurprising reformed orthodox way you know his particular adherence to the three forms of unity as it would be normal in his dutch confessional context in a secessionist church environment a free church environment in the 19th century um educated in in a pastor's household his whole life you know his adherence to reform scholastic theology in many ways that we would expect and then at the same time people noticed uh in his corpus um a relationship to a modern theology and philosophy in a surprising way and it's important to say that the term modern in this conversation refers to uh post kantian philosophy particularly epistemology post-french revolution politics so a modern theology in a post-industrialized social context post-1848 in the spring of nations across the european continent um so uh the idea comes out of not only his corpus having these almost um velhausen as brian matson puts it a way of reading a modern orthodox bobbing depending on what text you're in but but also his life and uh there have been prior understandings of his biography that have suggested a much more radical dualism in bobbins life in bobbing's heart between the world he grew up in and this scholarly elite world he wanted to be a part of and that's been read back into the texts and it's quite frankly been read a little bit too much into his biography i think as well and james has obviously exposed some of that in his in his own work but it's developed into a a culture a scholarly culture that wanted to pinpoint bob inc in different parts of his life as either mostly modern mostly orthodox so that that's the background um and therefore to to bob bobbinx dualism so when we're addressing this question of of orthodox yet modern uh i guess there's two questions at stake you know how do we define these terms within this conversation and within the scope of your book we want to understand how you're using the terms but i'm also interested to know whether bobbink himself used those terms and how he would have understood them yeah he did and one of the things i try to do in the book is is define the terms in a similar way to the way he defined them and let him his voice speak in that and the definition he provides of orthodoxy is quite simple i mean he says orthodoxy in one of his early essays is holding high the christian confession and so uh he's referring to creedal confessional adherence to the ecumenical uh consensus on what christianity is period plus uh speaking from a tradition so the reformed tradition obviously in this scenario so the confessional adherence to um the three forms of unity that is orthodoxy for him combined with uh what we might think of as an orthodox ethic as well a life a lifestyle a sabbatarian lifestyle a lifestyle of worship and and hard work and sabbath rest and um uh upholding the ten commandments um in the new covenant era and thing this is there's orthodox uh doctrine and orthodox lifestyle that floats from that doctrine uh the modern um in this context as i mentioned before and here my book mainly discusses theological modernity and philosophical modernity rather than a culture of modernity or political modernity i touch on those but this discussion about sherlock marker obviously in the background of emmanuel khan is about theological and philosophical modernity is really about a modern modernity in which uh thinking and knowing have been separated to the point that faith is relegated to the realm of thinking and not knowledge the bobbing lives in a 19th century environment where dogmatics is being pushed out of the university or theology serious theology as the knowledge of god is being pushed out of the university because after after immanuel kant uh god cannot be an object of knowledge and so really that is what i would think of as the primary ground of uh theological modernity um it gives rise to all sorts of theological modernities but it's relegating the possibility of faith in god outside the domain of knowing that's probably the the key the key thing i would say sure no it's really useful um i think it's also important to understand within that context what bobbin how bavic views himself and his task as a theologian that's a that's a main theme that that carries through the book as far as i picked up on it so i hope that was intentional that that the that that's actually there and i'm not reading something into it but how did how did bovink himself view the relation of uh well i guess number one how did bovink view the task what how did he understand the task of the theologian but then how did he also understand modern theology relating to orthodox or we might say even confessional theology yeah well you know we have that really explicit moment in reform dogmatics volume one the prolegomena i think it's page 44 if i remember correctly there bob inc says that the task of the theologian is to think god's thoughts after him and so therein as you guys are very familiar with and have expertise in you know he discusses his role as theologian within the domain of the archetypal egg typal distinction of knowing god as god has revealed himself so the task of the theologian is to think god's thoughts after him as god has revealed himself in his general and special revelation climax climaxing in christ of course but uh you know that's the broadest dogmatic task if you will but more specifically i think one of the things you're getting at is in the question is that bobbing opens up that volume reform dogmatics volume one the prolegomena with an original forward afford that was not published with the english translation of reformed dogmatics volume one where he understands his task and assigns two particular words to that task he says he says that uh what am i what i'm doing really is being reformed and catholic catholic being the principal term in his work um in the reform dogmatics uh and when he says that he um he's he's thinking of uh pushing pushing away um the idea of merely repristinating uh dogmatics of previous centuries while at the same time being grounded in the ancient truths of christianity so he talks about desiring to seek the truth wherever it can be found that god is the god who speaks truth that god has revealed all that is true and that we as dogmatists as theologians and as philosophers are are here to seek the truth wherever it can be found in a way that is fresh for the present day context so what he wants to do is be completely grounded in the work of surveying the truth as it's been presented by the holy spirit in revelation throughout the centuries to hold fast to what is ancient as he puts it but to not do so at the expense of uh of the today so he wants to be a theologian of today to speak uh to the people today in their lives today and when it comes to high level dogmatics you know you see him doing that specifically in the wonderful works of god speaking very clearly to his present-day context to the people that are in the pew and just doing normal life but in the dogmatics you see him speaking to today by engaging with the philosophical milieu of his time uh and he believes that that's extremely important task for a dogmatician for for a theologian to to know the philosophy to know the questions of the of the day to even speak the grammar of today to filter at least partially some of the dogmatic truths of old into the grammar of the contemporary context so that you can help the contemporary context understand how christian theology satisfies justifies answers the questions that they're asking um no that's that exactly i think hits on uh another aspect of your title and if we want to parse the the main title orthodox yet modern your your choice of conjunction there is extremely significant and we start to think of other words we could put in there orthodox or modern i think is what most people would anticipate right not from bobbing but i'm just saying if you're thinking of those two terms they want to fit or uh orthodox and modern might be another option but you use orthodox yet modern how does that fit in precisely with bobbing's own understanding well even you know and you said maybe not with bob but even with bob inc we would we would at first glance think it should be orthodox or modern right and and uh when we when we at least look at a biography of a man who's a confessional free church pastor and theologian um trying to maintain you know what we would think of as largely theological conservativism in a rapidly secularizing uh country at the time that's exactly you know what we would go to that's for one reason why we've we've helped upheld a two bobbins thesis right it's because we expect that this the orthodox yet or end doesn't make sense uh if if it's both then it's got to be a a fault a duality that doesn't fit together well right and uh and so the really the thesis of the work here that i've tried to do is building on james eglington and brian madison and others work of of rejecting the ore um in fact but also rejecting the and in favor of something else i've tried to give a case that actually bobbing's relationship to schleiermacher is the premier example the primary example in his entire corpus of what it looks like to have the yet that particular conjunction in place and in doing that what i've tried to show is that he he appropriates uh what he can find useful in the most important theologian of the 19th century from the academic perspective from this perspective of the academy so he did he didn't want to cast off and demonize schleiermacher um but of course we we can't say and he is he is in no way uh following on in the method or material dogmatics of a schleier marker or anybody else from the modern academy in that way but his appropriation of schleichmacker is the primary example i i think and argue in in the entire corpus across its whole career from beginning to end really that makes sense of um of the yet if you so could you introduce our listeners or maybe perhaps reintroduce and remind uh some people who friedrich schleiermacher was and uh and his significance uh i think a lot of people who've read van till and and other things in the field are gonna or even just any survey of contemporary or modern theology is gonna see the name but what was his great significance great contribution and how did he really in many ways shake up the whole world of theology for for centuries yeah yeah so i mean he's typically called the father of modern liberal protestantism he was a theologian he was a pastor he was a polymath he was born in the 18th century in germany and he will become a significant theologian at the university of berlin a university that he will help found he'll be one of the co-founders of that university and he was the pastor the minister of trinity church berlin which is a very significant church in uh germany um in terms of what what we typically in our you know tradition know know him as and of him through his his the modernisms of his theology those came about through his relationship a relationship between really three contexts he was a moravian when he was uh born moravian pietists so his father had been pretty radically converted and they had become moravian pietists and you know moravian pietism really presses home the need for a radical conversion experience and it's a very experientially based uh tradition of christianity and he was raised in that context he goes to school in that context and then when he becomes a teenager you know like like often is the case he gets caught at his school reading a manual con [Laughter] like every teenager struggles with right and um and also he got caught reading gerta gerta's novels and poems and uh the moravian community really almost kicked him out and later on he denies the um he had denies the atonement and he sent some kind of substitutionary atonement and that really propelled him into a lifelong journey of being an intellectual who was highly religious uh but seeking um an alternative and modernist expression of of christian theology he will he will mature he will grow up he will he will uh those are early things that he did but basically what he's known for is he'll write in 1799 after being a student in holla in the university of holla in germany he'll write a work in in berlin called on religion speeches to the culture despisers and that work comes out of his time a little bit later as a young adult in this romantic circle in berlin he was a a son of german romanticism that really prized individuality individuality was maximized and freedom was maximized imagination over reason was really the prize of german romanticism they were pushing back against enlightenment rationalisms and out of that him being still a religious person and confessing christianity to a degree um he came up with this idea essentially that it's a universal experience that every person has that we intuitively or in this domain that he calls feeling have some possession not really possession but awareness intuition of the infinite in the midst of our finiteness and that is what he says is religion this this sense this intuition this feeling of our being a part of the infinite although as finite beings and he'll go on to then couch that in much more christian terminology later in his life when he writes the christian faith his dogmatic work that becomes the principle text of modern theological liberalism if you will in the 19th century protestant liberalism and in it he will say something very similar he'll say that the way to ground dogmatics and the possibility of theology is to do first anthropology or ethics to go out really sociology to go out and understand that there are all these communities of people who have this religious consciousness and that religious consciousness from philosophy we learn from uh from ethical philosophy from metaphysics and ontology if you will is this uh feeling of absolute dependence on a holy other capital of want one that is beyond the finite in whom we all totally depend upon we have relative dependence with with each other with trees and with air and oxygen and even relative dependence with our own selves but when we feel that relative dependence we come to ascertain apprehend feel not know but feel into it uh a holy other upon which we must depend fully this is the religious consciousness sometimes in history that religious consciousness gets related to jesus christ of nazareth and then you have a christian church okay so he he grounds the dogmatic theological enterprise in first a a philosophy of consciousness expressed in a community of religious consciousness that that is awakened by the history of jesus christ and in that you have the christian consciousness developing in a community and then from there you can start asking questions like what must god be like on the basis of this collective consciousness we have of god through the lens of the history of jesus christ and that's the groundwork of dogmatics so that that becomes the sourcehorn the consciousness the collective communal consciousness becomes the norm for theologizing uh with that idea he revolutionized um theology of the 19th century everybody reacted to it started to find themselves against it or developed from it it created a tradition called mediation theology in germany in the netherlands involving you know very explicitly says after schleiermacher um he has all theology bobbing cries this is the direct quote all theology is dependent upon schleiermacher mediating uh liberal or confessional because everybody's dealing with it everybody's interacting with it everybody's responding to it it was really that quote from bob ink that first popped out at me when i was reading through dogmatics uh even at rts when i was a student that i thought well well what exactly do you mean by that and how has that impacted you you know as a as a theologian when you say something like that so tremendous as we've been exegeting the title of your book some and and actually this is kind of helpful right because it kind of gives a lead-in to discussion um i think the word i'm you know i'm i'm captivated i guess by the word actually use um within the title the subtitle of your book and um and you you're sort of hinting at that you know we're heading there i think but tell us then um my question is this how does then bob inc use schleiermacher um maybe even um a more provocative question would be how does bob inc not use schliermacher yeah well the in the original the original term i had in that in that slide was appropriate um appropriation herman bobbing's appropriation i think luxum felt like um use would be a more uh readable acceptable uh accessible subtitle than appropriation ingest yeah swallow yeah so assimilate you slimer let's start with that one um well he he does not use schleiermacher uh in almost every way um so that's that's one of the things i try to make clear is that what what you have to be it's it's in uh answering that question that we have to be quite nuanced about the whole point of this book this book my book is not saying that bob inc is uh is a schleiermacher um student if you will in the way that he he appropriates schley marker in some sign really significant way that shapes the whole of bobbins theology uh bobbing wholly rejects shaliah marker's theological method uh he thinks that schleiermacher has fundamentally um rejected the creator creature distinction is one of his most fundamental critiques of salah marker he thinks that schleichmarker's method um fails to understand that the principia of theology are themselves theological doctrines right that's one of the big things that he thinks schleichmacker fails to get and so he he wholly rejects the method and so much of the material dogmatics of shalom the actual content of the christian faith the positive um statements about god and things he disagrees with shalom marker on so much of that really it's more schleier markers religious his philosophy that's um wedded to to religion to faith is what he uses is what he appropriates and that's what you find at the very beginning schlemacher's book the christian faith propositions three to five that's that's right where bob inc camps out and he camps out there for so much of his career he comes back to it over and over again and it's really bobbing's use of the idea that uh religion piety is the feeling of absolute dependence on god this is schleiermarker's premier most important idea that he's most widely known for and bobby thinks bobbing understands that to be a way of speaking to modernity using the same concepts that calvin and augustine had already pointed out particularly calvin at the beginning of the institutes that the knowledge of god begins with knowing god in this self and the self and god uh he's picking up on that he's also using schleiermacher to talk about the census divinitatis of that calvin developed and this idea of the feeling of absolute dependence that schleichmarker developed at the beginning of the christian faith is precisely what bobbing appropriates over and over again he does it not only for a definition of religion he uses it i argue to expand um the concept of general revelation uh would they turn to the subject if you will and i can talk talk more about that if you guys like but um but the other area he uses it very significantly is in his own epistemology so he uses schleichmarker to help us understand how there is a unity and organic unity between subject and object and in our activity of knowing uh he uses the feeling of absolute dependence um to give a ground for uh epistemic certainty if you will so those are several of the significant ways yeah that's interesting the turn to the subject talk a little bit more about that i mean that's um that's characteristic of the modern period right i mean you know arguably beginning with descartes and then moving from there developing um not as if there was no role for the subjective in uh reformed theology prior to that but um bhavik is doing something distinctive here isn't he yeah that's right i mean um case vander coy um a dutch theologian at the free university he he makes the comment that throughout if you read across bobby's corpus you see a persistent turn to the subject in a way that could never be spoken or seen in a theologian like calvin and and i think you know i i worked i built up from that that quote from case uh to argue exactly the same thing in more precise ways um yeah the turn of the subject is is what we often think of as a premier premier example of what it means to be modern in the world of philosophy and theology descartes as you mentioned and then emanuel khan of course uh turning us into into ourselves and building the ground of knowledge in large measure from uh from within the the faculties and capacities of the human intellect the human understanding and then schleichmacher uh is the theologian of the self he he turns us all to the self um in the way he grounds the dogmatic process and and how what it means to do theology so that's exactly right uh and then with bob inc you see a persistent i mean corpus wide uh [Music] turn to the self and and that bobbing talks about the soul and the self and the spirit of humanity uh consistently in every theological loci that you might open the reformed dogmatics you're going to see him talk about what that means for the human subject in unique ways and in fresh ways so there's just this broad turn to the subject across all of his corpus that is reflective of the milieu reflective of the philosophies that he was reading at the time but he he again does that in a way that never um pushes pushes against the confessional doctrines that he adheres to and so one of the ways for example that i try to argue for that i think is a little bit fresh and unique uh in terms of studying bob inc as a theologian and some of his constructive ideas is uh the suggestion that um the suggestion that god in his general revelation uh the first domain i should say sorry of god's general revelation for bobbing the first thing that one should talk about when discussing the way god reveals himself in his universal revelation to all peoples is in the consciousness and for bob incan that happens first through god's upholding the possibility of of i-ness of the ego of me being me bobbing says as soon as anyone reflects upon the highness of me uh they are thrown in this is exactly what schlattermarker discovered they are thrown into this feeling that i am a given as he often would say uh the term the idea is given this and you see this in uh 19th century philosophy quite often and bobbing uses this term constantly he uses it especially uh persistently throughout the philosophy of revelation in 1908 but he talks about the givenness of the self and he says in the given givenness and unity of this self and we we in theological terms are experiencing um the gift of god and the revelation of god a general revelation of god and upholding and revealing god's self to the human consciousness universally in the possibility of even being a self of having an identity of being able to say i bobbing things that we should see in that um an aspect of god's general revelation the holy spirit is not far from every one of us and it's in him we live in and move and have our being and this is part of what calvin for bobbing in a very modern way a very modern way of saying it is part of calvin's idea of the common operation of the spirit um and so that's one theological uh way that bob inc expresses this turn to the subject but does it within the domains of um confessional reformed uh theology and the historic distinctions between general and special revelation for example i suppose for folks who have only read reformed theology i'm imagining many of our listeners have read bob inc calvin you know more than vaguely familiar they're probably pretty familiar with these theologians but if that's all we've read we might be missing uh what was what bob ink and calvin were contributing to the to the entire history of christian thought and what was so new about them and so bobink as a modern theologian is interacting with with contemporary psychology of his day and and also with the modern theology here in this turn to the subject if all you've ever read is bob ink you might say well he's not he's not a modernist in the sense that without that presbyterian speak in the 20th century so and hasn't theology always been done this way and you might lose sight of what's actually original to bobbing so i guess that's that's it's important for us to read the whole span and to do in the good sense you know a project of retrieval of reading ancient theology and reading all the way through up to the present day uh reading the classics insofar as we're able and have time and the ability i'd like to zoom in a bit on bovink himself not just looking at the whole scope of christian thought there's great value in that but even within bobbings corpus there's certain things he's focusing on early on and and perhaps other things he's addressing later in his life leading up eventually to 1908 in the stone lectures what kinds of development do we find in in bobby's personal life particularly his use of schleiermacher and the themes that he focuses on yeah that's a great question so uh one of the things that i try to establish is that you see a significant shift towards a more direct appropriation and use of shiloh marker in his later career and one of the ways we often think about his career is divided by his move to the free university of amsterdam and so he uh he's a he's a briefly a pastor in the very early 1880s after his doctorate at the university of leiden but then he will be a professor in compton in the netherlands a smaller town and really the school of his own denomination um all the way until 1902 the end of 1901 and um you know as uh as as you guys know from from the biography he gets he gets asked to come to the free university five times and uh those are very entertaining uh interactions between him and kuiper in in the in the bio that we've just had that james has just had published but um in that early phase uh what we saw was a significant amount of interaction with schleiermacher at the university of leiden and really him getting deep down into reading mediation theologies reading these modern german philosophers and theologians at that time and he comes out of of the university of leiden and in the first couple essays he writes you know schleiermarker's name is in the first three sentences and uh he's he even his dissertation opens with a paragraph on shalar marker in his recovery of ethics uh as he begins to write an entire dissertation on the ethics of ulrich zwingli and but it's bookended both at the first paragraph and very end of the work by talking about schleimecker's recovery of ethics and ethics of virtue in particular in the 19th century however um from that point in the 80s and 90s the 1880s and 90s we don't see him dealing with schleier marker in particular very often instead we see a turn to the subject if you will emphasized in just the the content of his early essays and kind of what his projects were he wrote a big treat as a three-part treatise on the conscience very early on which was a very live discussion within mediation theology mediation theology being developed really in conversation with schleier marker and hegel at the time um so he turns to the conscience he uh you know his his stuff on the kingdom of god is just filtered with the language of uh well how he talks about the garden of eden and and the first sin entering the world as being the rupture of god and self-consciousness which was exactly the way that that people were often talking about it in the mediation theologies uh schleimecker talked about it in his ethics um the rupture of god and self-consciousness in the first sin um uh so you have these just moments uh constantly in the early corpus of the things like that but then you get to the later corpus you get to the stone lectures you get the philosophy revelation and um you know he says something in chapter three the philosophy of revelation like it's we we have to say that schleichmaker uh more than emmanuel kant more than the philosophers of the 19th 18th and 19th century got it right when they said that um humanity is not autonomous but is fundamentally categorized by a feeling of absolute dependence and he really uses that quote that statement to uh as a thesis in some ways for his his two-chapter treatise on the self in the philosophy of revelation so there is certainly i argue and i think at least um and there are a lot more examples a turn to schleiermarker in a more significant way in the latter portions of uh his career um uh we see a couple a couple maybe one other thing that i could mention is just for example in the philosophy of revelation i mean one of the reasons that grace sutanto and i tried to republish the philosophy of revelation was just because there were places in the original english translation that had not been inc there were items that had not been included so just um two or three sentences here and there at times that were just not present from the dutch edition um funny enough a lot of them were about method bobbins critiques of method i'm not sure uh why those particular sentences didn't make the cut but there's a methodist deep state corey this is a reason apparently gerhardt is a secret he married a methodist his wife was a former methodist my my wife is a former methodist too which is why i remember this but uh there you go i i don't think she's part of any intelligentsia or deep state though i hope not otherwise i'm doomed yeah yeah so there were there was a few things like that um in a few areas we thought we could we could translate differently but one of the reasons was because a lot of times in a work like that bob inc will use uh german or french or something like that directly into the text um in the middle of his dutch sentences and if you don't make a note of it you might miss what he's doing and so one of the things for instance that appears several times in the philosophy relation is he uses bob uh schiller markers very unique german term for uh for dependents uh and he uses that term um throughout the philosophy of revelation but he doesn't translate it he leaves it in german and you know there's only one other place that that really shows up and it's in flower marker and if you don't see the german you wouldn't know that that's what he was doing is that a good feel is that the word you're referring to or is there a different one yeah fool and uh um then the modifier that schlamker uses for absolute right yeah so uh yeah so um but you see that showing up and and get full is uh one of the significant ones as well so this has been um stimulating and and i think that there's so much more uh that that has to be said and that i um have to you know we we really just got to say to our listeners folks got to read the book and read it because um you're gonna it's it's not just kind of like interesting factoids right about you know oh he you know um uh interacts with schleiermacher at this point i mean this is this is sort of programmatic right you know how do we as as orthodox confessional reformed theologians interact in the world around us right i mean this is this is a an m.o modus operandi kind of um question kind of book and um and it's big um so in light of that then i have a question that's sort of like an opinion question it doesn't arrive it's not in the book or anything corey so i just want to get your reflections on this um and uh so if you don't mind me putting you on the spot a little bit um hopefully it won't be uh too uh too much of a scathing question or anything but i'm thinking you know it just you know as we've been reflecting a little bit on titles that have conjunctions in them right you know the the and um and we're talking about orthodox and modern orthodox yet modern et cetera uh i can't help but to think of two books that are uh that are very near and dear to our heart here at reform forum uh the one would be uh machines christianity and liberalism right which is uh a very purposeful uh use of and which is an antithetical use of and right um the two are incompatible um and then the second book of course i have in mind is van till um who who writes uh christianity and bartianism right and and once again they're borrowing from um from machines mo of of sort of a very strong polemical um approach to modern and then barty and theology respectively um so uh and then i think about van till's dissertation on god in the absolute right uh where i see i mean my initial thinking is that i see van till working in a very bavinkian kind of m.o in that dissertation where he is wanting to uh set the more philosophical forms of of the absolute in in idealism in his day in antithesis to christianity particularly reforms christianity um but also at the same time wanting to say this is what you guys are seeing and it's good that you're seeing this we can attribute this to you know special revelation the omego dei whatever um but you have packaged it wrong let me tell you the way in which you should have and you could have and if you repent and believe in the gospel you will repackage it in a way that's honoring to god and keeping with the scriptures so anyway just sort of maybe what are your thoughts in terms of the way that machine and van till in their very strong use of the and um kind of a polemical antithetical uh relationship of christianity or reformed theology to uh modern forms of unbelief as they would i think say it uh and then the way that bobbing sort of developed his mo relative to uh to modern thought yeah well i mean the first thing to say i think is that and this is really part of the central thesis of this work is that in in terms of machine ventil uh and then their predecessor bob inc um [Music] these guys are all in agreement on you know almost all of of what it is that one ought to believe according to the scriptures right um i think the difference that we're talking about is sometimes largely driven by personality uh can be uh have a huge amount to do it you see this in in the in the kuiper bavink relation um of course bobbing did plenty of and of course and conjunction conjunctioning if we could come up with a a way of saying it you know um ninety percent and i say this in the book ninety percent of all his references to schleiermacher are critiques um now i do still think that there is a uh difference in the way bobbing did polemics uh polemical theology versus a matron of until and a kuiper um and i see personally again a pen like you said this is an opinion question my opinion would be when i when i read kuiper when i read matron of until i see a lot of personality similarities in the way that they express themselves and um bobby bobbing was a different sort um not not in the need for polemics not in pushing the and and the differences constantly and uh calling out unbelief uh he he did those things absolutely and one must um uh bob inc was just a uh he just had a very very ironic bent to where he wanted to um help i think bring people along and have some of these contemporary modern hists as his interlocutors and so especially in his career i mean he saw his work in the philosophy of revelation for example and in some of his later essays as being hoping that they would be in conversation with the guys that that disagreed with him most um so he saw in his own career this kind of turned towards pushing christianity in conversation with with um modernist post-nation opposing netherlands and uh and i think that he thought the best method to do that was to really just steal man other people's arguments as much as possible um certainly critique them but also use them wherever he could in hopes to bring them along and and that's what i think he's trying to do in the philosophy revelation in large measure is trying to show how so much of what they've been searching for for instance in uh the history of religion school and religious studies as an example has failed he wants to say a lot of what your efforts are commendable but you failed and the reason you failed is because you don't understand that you can't get behind religion because the reason religion exists is because god's revealed himself but he tried to do it in such a way that wasn't as um didn't push the and as much uh in a lot of the text and i think that was for the sake of almost an apologetic evangelistic type effort at times um you know he was also a national figure in the netherlands in his late career and so he was he was being read i mean his works were showing up in in reviews in in the primary national newspaper out of amsterdam that everybody was going to read and uh they were being reviewed and interacted with by the chairs of all the major universities and uh so there was there was um i think there's something in that i mean of course we can say the same thing about kuiper who who always needed an opponent kuiper you know kuiper's theology really develops as a theology of opposition i mean he need he needs to have somebody that he's defining himself against that's kind of oftentimes the way we see his theology developing bobbing did that to be sure and he says even in the original forward of the reformed dogmatics that a theologian must engage in polemics and uh for him in the in the 19th century he thought of the contemporary roman catholicism culture as one of the primary traditions he needed to really push back against uh post-vatican one roman catholicism for example but um you're right i mean there's certainly a difference in in in my mind and i'd love to hear y'all's thoughts about this between uh the style in van till and in matron and um in kuiper and then the style we see in bob inc and and i do think a lot of it i do think a lot of it's driven by personality um but i wonder that that's a great answer corey oh man i mean you just opened up a a wonderful oh man we could go forever now um but i it just a quick comment maybe and then back to you to just see what your thoughts are but you know i think that there's also a contextual difference and despite the um you know the dutchness of van till right in his um background and closeness to bovick in that regard um it it seems to me that um when you know machin and van till well let's let let's talk about machine because maybe that's the more most easy or more more comparable uh figure um when machine is fighting liberalism um in his day um you know i mean he's he is uh he he's a marginalized figure i mean okay yeah he's got radio addresses and so he has sort of an outlet he he's getting he gets mentioned in the newspapers but usually with a good deal of scorn right um so uh he's a bit of a marginalized figure it seems to me that the um you can't quite line up i don't think perfectly the opc let's say machines opc and then the seceders right um because you the seceders it seems to me and i then correct me where i'm wrong because i don't know my dutch history very well dutch church history but it seems to me that from uh from the uh from the outset at least there was maybe maybe the seceders were not as sort of a marginal um group of people the way that um that the opc was and and perhaps still is today right so um bobbing seems to be certainly kuiper seems to be these guys seem to be um sort of not only striving for mainstreamness um but also maybe they they inherited some mainstreamness even as a breakoff group from the big mother church you know i don't know what are your thoughts i think that's a very good point i i think i mean of course you know we're talking about an abraham kuiper that's the prime minister of the netherlands in 1901 to 1905. um machine you know was never gonna probably be president um uh so i wrote him in what is it this is not gonna work [Laughter] uh i think you're what you say is especially true opposed to 1848 between 1834 and 1848 in the secessionist church there was a lot of marginalization and and suffering um at the expense of the established monarchical religion uh church at the time um it's similar to the similar to the free church of scotland and uh the church of scotland in the 19th century as well um and just you know the free church like the the secession church lost mances they lost buildings they uh et cetera but but when as you know we get to the latter career of bobby and kaiperi that's i think that's absolutely right and i think that contextual difference is enormous um so that's helpful yeah i think that's a great point by virtue of you know machine being an american right i mean in the context being america where you don't have an established church uh you know versus the dynamics of what it means in both scotland and the netherlands where you have break off groups from the national church i mean there's just it's just different it's just different and you know the netherlands is so small geographically and that that's a huge factor in all this it's it's you know geographically it's it's not the size of even a small portion of the united states and so um yeah you're right it's very different contextually there's probably some layers here to discover or at least explore for future scholars particularly between the relationship of bovink to vos and we know how how close their families were and boving and voss were very close friends uh platonic soul mates perhaps uh for a time but yet uh families having grave differences at least jan bovink having a grave difference uh uh with uh with uh gerhardis father over their willingness to leave the country and to and to go to the the quote new world unquote so there's layers there as well perhaps to discuss and and uh that's they've been interesting historical theological historical ecclesiological study and uh and cultural on how these church commitments ecclesiastical commitments overlap with perhaps cultural or political or sociological proclivities affect whatever in terms of desiring to be uh either splinter groups separatists or desiring to be kind of recover the mainstream or or fight for that middle who knows cory i'm curious to ask you perhaps as we try to tie things up and and offer a way forward here with the book jim made a comment on how how important this book is uh and and studying bhavik on this question is so significant significant not because it's just an interesting theological and historical curiosity but because it provides us a model and an example in that sense it can be not moralistic but exemplaristic perhaps for the contemporary theologians task i wonder if you might be able to speak to that uh in terms of your own personal conviction but also an encouragement to to listeners and other theologians and budding theologians out there how we might learn from bob inc in this sphere and therefore perhaps recover uh this kind of mode of theologizing uh as a way to to seek the truth and and uh advance the kingdom of god in in submission to our savior jesus christ yeah thanks i i you know one thing i think very simple to say is just that i do think bob inc is the most significant and important um christian theologian of modernity and i think that a reformed theologian i should say and uh certainly not the only not even close to the only uh reformed dogmatic systematic theology that we that any of us should be reading in terms of modern systematic theologies but the first thing to say is i think you know it's it's just worth saying that we should go read read him as just a great work a great theologian and a great piece of theology that is a very doxological theology i mean as much as it is orthodox yet modern as much as you're gonna be forced to engage with uh immanuel kant and schlong michael and hagel and rachel as you as you work through the rd perform dogmatics you're gonna turn the page and uh be led into into these just moments of great doxology and it's just a fantastic place to go learn learn theology from on the one hand i mean that's one of the great things but if we go from there and ask you know and think more about maybe people people like you guys that are that are doing theo constructive theology in the contemporary world um a couple things that i i took away from from this study as i worked through as i worked in it and worked with bob inc was was bobbing thinking that dogmatic systematic theology has to be re written and rewritten for every single generation it was his view and um in some ways bobbing through and as much as bobbington's voice speaks to us today i think one of the things he wants to say to us is you know don't think that what i've done stands uh it's an important place along the way and it it is carrying forward the ancient truths of christianity that have been revealed to us in scripture um in a very helpful and fresh way but he wants us to keep working and um and to keep writing and i think the way to do that is to see what he did and that's that our dogmatics if we were to write a four volume dogmatics any of us it doesn't need to you know maybe maybe by someday someday we might um he doesn't need to uh look just like his we should see very different names dotted all throughout the pages right we should see we should see uh the names of the 21st century in the 20 late 20th century and you know i think in some ways we shouldn't see very much perhaps even bart in our interaction in our pages we're moving past even that amen right and and um that that the 21st century will need to have a fresh presentation in each language of dogmatics that interacts with the most important thinkers of the day and is asking the questions of the people uh sometimes those questions stay the same of course because humans are humans but they come they come in fresh ways in different ways and uh in each contest considering the culture we're we're living in a post-christian west in large measure now and uh and that that needs to have uh that needs to be a part of what it means to write dogmatics in the contemporary world so um yeah those are some of the things that that i would that would come to my mind on that question that's superb and of course none of that to the exclusion of becoming familiar with the confessional tradition heretofore i mean uh bob ink obviously is very fluent with um early christian thought and and all the way through and uh i think we can go one of two ways which would be bad ways to go and that is to uh only focus on the past and history with no attention to the current challenges and current issues facing the church or vice versa where we're just caught up in the in the current so much that we have no notion of the issues that have gone before us and in fact we're seeing a lot of that in evangelical theology even right now in terms of doctrine of god in particular this this all-consuming nature of various questions particularly the god-man relation with no no collective memory of the fact that these issues have been dealt with before we always need to revisit them we always need to speak with the current vernacular into the current context but uh never losing sight of uh the church's own reflection on these questions in the past corey this has been just a really fun conversation i uh i'm reinvigorated in many ways by listening to you and i want people to uh take a look at the book here orthodox yet modern herman bovink's use of friedrich schleiermacher by our guest today corey c brock it's published by luxem press in their studies in historical and systematic theology series thanks for taking the time to speak with us we really appreciate it yeah thanks i really appreciate you guys well many blessings on you and your ministering future work of course corey's at first presbyterian church jackson the pca down there everyone should know about as uh well as being involved in belhaven university as a lecturer in christian thought and reformed theological seminary they have a branch there or a campus in jackson so take a look at those places we'll have links to the various things in the episode description and you can find all this online at reformedforum.org where you'll also find information about our other programs online courses publications all that sort of fun stuff i do want to thank you all for listening and we hope you join us again next time on christ the center you

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Published: Thu Dec 10 2020