Bavinck on Evolution and Education

I was doing some research into Herman Bavinck’s view of inspiration and inerrancy, when I came across yet another prophetic blurb by Bavinck:

He who takes into account the lesson of evolution quickly comes to the conclusion that the present-day system of education is one great error. Up to now men have given almost exclusive attention to the soul of man, and to its hereafter. They have taken their start from ideas, fixed norms, unchangeable conceptions, and have placed before themselves as their chief aim to implant maxims and dogmas, and to fill the head with representations and ideas which are in opposition to nature, and can therefore never be assimilated. This education has neglected the body, fatigued the brain, weakened the nerves, suppressed originality, slackened initiation, and the consequence is that the children on leaving school have possessed no independence, and have had no eye to see and no ear to hear. They have been completely estranged from life; and what is of more importance, the education which has alone been hitherto procurable has shown its incapacity, especially, in that during its continuance men have retained the same nature and the same defects; it has not eradicated a single sin or brought about any moral improvement whatsoever. (The Philosophy of Revelation, 277-278)

Bavinck, as you might recall, was one of the major “fathers of Neo-Calvinism,” successor to Abraham Kuyper as Doctor of Theology at Free University. He was born on December 13, 1854. (That’s five years before Darwin published Origin of Species.) Bavinck’s father was a preacher in the Dutch Christian Reformed Church, and his family was influenced by a more pietistic strand of Reformed spirituality. Bavinck studied at the CRC denomination’s own seminary, Kampen Theological School, from 1873-74. But then he shocked his family by enrolling at the University of Leiden. He wanted “to become acquainted with modern theology first hand.” As a result, Bavinck felt the tension of being pulled between secular modernism and orthodox Christianity. His theology reveals the desire to take the best out of modern culture and pietism to work out a biblical, trinitarian, and Reformed worldview. His 4 volume Reformed Dogmatics, a ground-breaking accomplishment in the field of systematic theology, was recently translated from Dutch to English.

Bavinck’s work speaks almost directly to today’s “post-modern” church, since unlike Calvin and other great theologians, Bavinck experienced first-hand all of  the challenges of the Age of Modernism; German higher criticism, Darwinism, secular universities/changes in education, industrialization, Freudian psychology, the new “social gospel,”  the first world war, etc. Of course, the challenges of today’s Post-Modernism aren’t that far off; we have Bart Ehrman challenging the veracity of the Scripture, Dawkins and Hitchens popularizing evolution, continual godlessness in the university, globalization to change societal structures, regurgitated Freudian psychology in sociology, anthropology and psychiatric departments, Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren pushing the social gospel, and the “war on terrorism” in Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In this quote, and like in so much of his work, it’s as if Bavinck is speaking directly to the people today. Continue reading one of finest theologians of all time by clicking here (or downloading) and scrolling to page 278, in The Philosophy of Revelation: the Stone lectures for 1908-1909.