A long Echoing Voice
The Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, has been called the most important theologian of the twentieth century. My son and daughter in law named their dog after him, so there’s that. If you know the name, you probably associate it with his four volume Reformed Dogmatics, happily translated into English just in 2009. He was a deep and expansive thinker, whose devotion is matched only by his orthodox creativity.
Fewer realize that Bavinck wrote a little (161 page) book: The Christian Family, a small gem of his “organic theology” applied to love and marriage. Even though it was written over a hundred years ago–in 1908—and shows its age at some points, Bavinck gives us much about the subject to ponder and enjoy. He even includes a section on dating and engagement, noting “engagement is a laboratory for beginning to learn to tolerate one another’s faults” (p76).
Remarkably Current
Some of the discussions are remarkably current, like his answer to the critique of European society’s inequality or the advocacy to legalize prostitution (in 1908!) or the intrusion of the state into childrearing or the resistance he sees to God’s ordinances on gender. Why do I feel like, in every age, we are living out the resistance Paul anticipates in 1Corinthians 11:16 “If anyone is inclined to be contentious…” or 1Corinthians 14:36 “Or did the word of God originate with you…”?
Bavinck, in his steady way, pens beautiful passages on experiences and features of marriage and family that have the power to change the way we look at these things. Consider his rich rumination on the time of coming of romantic age:
No time is as remarkable as that when love awakens and expands across all of life. Poets have sung about it, sages have thought about it, art and literature derive their richest motifs from it, and the heart of every person is full of it. The blossoming of the rose in the garden, the appearance of spring In the course of the seasons, the rising of the sun in nature are no more beautiful than the opening of the human heart to the luxuriousness of love. From the hidden depths of the life of the soul rises a world of stirring beauty. Sentiment overpowers the senses, driving back every other impulse and surpassing all others in intimacy and power. Experiences are enjoyed that are not to be compared with any other in tenderness and depth. Ideals are formed, for which all the richness of life contributes material. Expectations for the future are cherished, the kind that reach far above the wildest dreams. On all these experiences marriage sets the crown. It is the apex of human life, the ultimate goal of years of effort, the victory after a long struggle, the destination of a long preparation. When the groom brings the bride to his home, then love celebrates its most beautiful triumph., while heaven and earth lift of their song of blessing (p74).
Lofty Struggles
Bavinck’s text, though, does not simply dwell on lofty thoughts about the created gifts of love, marriage and society. His constructive project needs these affirmations of wholesomeness. But he also writes quite realistically and practically about singleness (He himself married in his thirties after a failed romance in his early twenties) and the struggles of marriage. (especially noting for men, infidelity, and for women, stubbornness). He engages with alternate answers of evolution. And he answers objections about Biblical teaching.
An unexplored suggestion
But of most interest to me are his suggestions of where intergendered love began and finds its root:
“the uniqueness and richness of feminine qualities no less than those of the masculine capacities find their origin and example in the divine Being” (p66).
This intriguing reference is supplemented at a few points in the book, such as in the account of creation of humanity:
“The child born is the fruit of fellowship…The two-in-oneness of husband and wife expands with a child into a three-in-oneness….” (p8).
Where is the great theologian going with this? As Bavinck scholar, James Eglington, explains in his introduction to Bavinck’s book:
“Bavinck’s work is essentially one giant effort to develop a worldview centered on the Triune God; marriage and the family included….The Triune God is the single most important factor in Bavinck’s thought…
Although Bavinck believed that God’s triunity (…the supreme model of unity-in-diversity) was utterly unique and could not be replicated elsewhere, he also believed that everything created by the Triune God somehow referred back to this divine unity in diversity. The universe is, after all the general revelation of its Triune Creator” (p.x-xi, emphasis mine).
The ”somehow,” alas, remained unexplored. But someone competent really should explore how sexual differentiation “refers back to this divine unity in diversity.” It would enhance our worship of the great Triune God as well as illuminate and explain gender for us.
A tired, beleaguered world awaits.