Biblical Ethics In A Divided Age: Learning From Herman Bavinck

Much of American political discourse is really about ethics. Based on the latest news cycle, debates flare up about topics like the use of excessive force by police, systemic causes of racial disparities, gender identity, and sexual abuse in the church. Tragically, contemporary political polarization often makes it hard for Christians to see ethical problems through a consistently biblical lens.

That’s what makes the publication of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Social Ethics: Perspectives on Society, Culture, State, Church, and the Kingdom of God so valuable. Though technology and circumstances have changed since Bavinck wrote, he was wrestling with many of the same basic questions that drive today’s political discourse.

This volume complements the three volumes of Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics. It’s been compiled and edited by a team of translators led by John Bolt, professor emeritus of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary. The content fills out notes that Bavinck left behind. It’s drawn from Bavinck’s writings and frequently embeds Bolt’s insight into Bavinck’s thinking about social ethics, which have been gleaned from decades of careful study.

Central to Bavinck’s social ethic was the idea that Christians have a twofold vocation within God’s created order: a calling to eternal salvation and an earthly duty to imitate Christ both spiritually and morally. The gospel is a call to salvation that has implications for the way we live in society. Bavinck applied this distinction well to the relationship of church and state, but at times he was too complacent about legitimate social wrongs. We witness in Bavinck the power of biblical fidelity and the limitations encouraged by his social context.

Bavinck’s Social Context

Bavinck’s social ethics developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the shadow of European industrialization and urbanization. Amid displacement and disorientation, social reform movements like socialism and the social gospel applied political and economic ideas, including some concepts drawn from the Bible, to wage a class struggle.

Bavinck witnessed the rise of social reform organizations such as the Social-Democratic Alliance and the Protestant Workers Alliance. Those organizations attempted to use the state to enforce their moral vision for society, which was often framed in opposition to Christianity. Bavinck’s social ethics developed in response to the social critiques of revolutionary organizations, Christian socialists, and social gospelers like Walter Rauschenbusch, whom he deemed radical egalitarians.

Eventually, Bavinck himself joined the Anti-Revolutionary Party and became a member of the Dutch parliament as his party resisted secularization and violent revolution. He, like Abraham Kuyper, was deeply influenced by Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s antimaterialistic argument in Unbelief and Revolution, which rejected attempts to engage in politics apart from religious reasoning. From that basis, Bavinck worked out the application of a Christian ethic to the public sphere in response to specific contextual questions.

Yet while wielding political power in parliament, Bavinck recognized that the state can abuse its power. The Dutch lived with the memory of Catholic persecutions against Protestants. Though Bavinck didn’t dwell on this abuse or outline an appropriate Christian response to the abuse of power, he prompted readers to consider how sin distorts the use of power and the creation of governmental systems. Thus, Bavinck argued for the indirect influence of the church on the state through the gospel’s transformative power.

Distinguishing Church and State

There’s no question that, for Bavinck, the purpose of the gospel is salvation. Yet he was also clear that the gospel has moral implications: Christianity demands right living. That right living includes pursuing the good of society as defined by Christian principles.

To demonstrate the gospel’s focus on salvation over social action, Bavinck pointed to Jesus’s acceptance of social conditions as they existed. “Jesus is not a man of science or art, nor is he a politician or economist,” wrote Bavinck. “He is no social reformer or demagogue, nor a party man or a class struggler. He accepts social conditions as he finds them and never tries to bring about a change or improvement in them” (6).

Bavinck argues for the indirect influence of the church on the state through the gospel’s transformative power.

Quoted in isolation, it might seem that Bavinck was suggesting Jesus was apathetic to social conditions. However, Bavinck identified that the gospel encourages a “new moral relation that would eventually, in the course of time, change and reshape them, not in a revolutionary but in a reformational way” (51). The gospel is meant to work its way through society via the lives of believers transformed by its power.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that Bavinck saw a distinction between the roles of the church and state for social transformation. He warned against using the state’s coercive power to “protect the church with the material sword against heretics, because Christ gave his spiritual sword to do that” (137). Simultaneously, he highlighted the spiritual focus of the church to encourage moral reformation through conversion. Moral virtue comes from a change in the heart, not external force from the state.

Tolerating Inequality

At times, however, Bavinck seems too tolerant of some of the social conditions of his day. He was aware of and laments the heinous immorality of racism and classism. Moreover, he acknowledged the deplorable economic exploitation of workers.

However, to Bavinck, earthly inequalities weren’t the problem. They were a part of the created order and God’s will. Thus, salvation through the gospel “does not set aside all the differences and inequalities that exist among people in this earthly life” (19). He cited scriptural examples of inequality after Christ’s resurrection, even among Christians. “Redemption does change matters, however,” he wrote. “From the principle of reconciliation with God, all other human relationships are given a new ordering and led back to their original state” (19). That original state was just, though it included inequalities.

Yet Bavinck didn’t sufficiently distinguish between God-given natural and sin-tainted social differences. He argued, “The differences between rich and poor, slave and free, parents and children, civil authorities and subjects are assumed and honored fully by Jesus and his apostles in their words and deeds” (19). This conflates natural distinctions that are God-ordained (like parent-child) with social distinctions that are the result of sin (like slave-master).

Bavinck’s application was nuanced, but his antirevolutionary instinct sometimes clouded his moral vision. A Christian social ethic must consider sin’s role in causing inequalities while refraining from assuming a distorted view of equity that downplays true natural differences and abilities. Bavinck’s social ethics reminds us that in avoiding the excesses of one extreme, we must take special care to resist the flaws of the other extreme.

Bavinck’s social ethics reminds us that in avoiding the excesses of one extreme, we must take special care to resist the flaws of the other extreme.

The theological and biblical foundations of Bavinck’s social ethics are helpful, even if he imperfectly applied them. Beyond its historical significance, this book’s chief value is in demonstrating the consistent substance of Christian moral reasoning across the ages.

Bavinck wrote a robust social ethic amid a vastly changing society and culture in response to an array of thinkers aiming to solve the social problems of the day. Thus, Reformed Social Ethics will assist Christians as they consider a social ethic that shapes how we think about inequality, difference, power, politics, and the many issues of our vastly changing society and culture.