What Herman Bavinck Taught Me About Modern Medicine

I’ve worked as a physician for more than 30 years. As much as I love my job (you won’t find a happier doctor!), over the years, I began to sense a gnawing uneasiness about my profession as a whole. I felt that something wasn’t right with this establishment. But how could that be? I spend all day helping people recover from illnesses—isn’t that a naturally good thing?

Then, just before the pandemic, God opened doors for me to attend Reformed Theological Seminary online while working as a full-time hospital physician in San Francisco. Surprisingly, studying theology while working as a doctor enabled me to begin answering some of those lingering questions.

Among the many sources I encountered in my studies, a Dutch theologian born in 1854 named Herman Bavinck was most helpful. Here are four Bavinckian approaches to theology and life that helped me to analyze modern medicine from a biblical perspective.

Commitment to the Doctrine of God

God, and God alone, is man’s highest good and the highest good of all his creatures. For God is the creator and sustainer of all things, the source of all being and all life, and the abundant fountain of all goods. All creatures owe their existence from moment to moment solely to him who is the one, eternal, omnipresent Being.

All creatures owe their existence from moment to moment solely to him who is the one, eternal, omnipresent Being.

In the first pages of his famous Wonderful Works of God, Bavinck sees all of life in light of who God is and what he does (i.e., the doctrine of God). This is the starting point of understanding everything in life. Bavinck’s contemporary Abraham Kuyper said that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life” that doesn’t belong to God. Obviously this includes the field of medicine. For most Christians in medicine, this claim might be easy to agree with in theory but puzzling to put into practice. What does prescribing antibiotics have to do with God’s character?

It may be nearly impossible for me to connect the dots as to how the doctrine of God applies to my treatment choices for my patients. But Bavinck taught me that nothing occurs apart from God’s gaze. God owns everything, including the “cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10), and he knows how everything connects to himself and his actions. Analyzing medicine theologically must therefore also start with this foundation.

Commitment to Mystery

“Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics,” Bavinck writes.

In my first years of medical school, information about the human body and diseases was taught as fixed facts written in stone. However, as I continued my career, it became apparent what a mystery human health is. In modern health care, evidence-based medicine is revered as the gold standard—yet every clinician will tell you that new data from every trial uncovers more questions.

Bavinck was a true polymath of his day, an intellectual giant. Even so, his respect for human limitations and for the grandeur of God’s majesty in his revelations permeates all Bavinck’s writings. This posture of humility helped me make sense of the available medical data and restrained me from an arrogant “god complex.” Respect for the mystery of human health reminded me who was actually in charge of my patients’ health.

Commitment to Being Fair and Balanced

“Readers often find Bavinck arguing there’s always something good and true even in the most errant writers (by God’s common grace),” Bavinck scholar Gray Sutanto writes. He’s highlighting Bavinck’s posture of epistemological fairness even toward those with whom he vehemently disagreed. Bavinck saw that all truths are God’s truths, regardless of who discovered them.

Such a posture of impartial assessment of all claims and knowledge is especially important when practicing medicine. In my profession, most of what I do is based on studies and protocols devised by non-Christians. However, because of common grace, God’s truths are revealed in medicine in trustworthy and useful ways. The incredible recent advances in modern medicine that have improved our quality of life and life expectancy are self-evident.

However, like any other establishment in this already-not-yet world, medicine is a mixture of good and bad. So there’s no reason to wholesale accept or reject the validity of modern medicine and its approaches. I realized this to be true over many years, though I wish I’d known it as a young doctor. Medical healing isn’t possible without common grace. And medicine isn’t the final authority on human health—God is.

Commitment to Being Contextualized and Faithful

“The Christian faith is the recognition of a work of God—a work that began in the dawn of time and continues in this era—that its essence is a fruit of the ages, while its form is the fruit of this age,” Bavinck writes. “However much good Francken’s Kern, Marck’s Merg and Brakel’s Reasonable Service affected in former days, they can no longer be brought to new life. They do not speak to the younger generation, and they involuntarily give rise to the thought that Christianity no longer fits in this present era. Thus, there is an urgent need for a work that takes the place of these works of the fathers and brings forth old truth in a form that corresponds with the demands of this era.”

On a cursory reading, this may seem like a statement of liberal compromise, claiming that timeless Christian classics no longer “speak to the younger generation.” However, on careful examination, this approach mirrors Paul’s adaptive missiology. Bavinck is claiming that because God is sovereign in every age, his work is seen by every generation, but the details of how he works change as the world changes. Bavinck is committed to making sure our historic, orthodox faith is lived out in an uncompromising yet relevant way to each generation in every circumstance.

Medical healing isn’t possible without common grace. And medicine isn’t the final authority on human health—God is.

When I became a Christian in medical school, I didn’t realize how challenging it’d be for believers to work in this profession. Dealing with arrogance and cynicism, repeated exposure to untimely deaths, the pressure to produce profit, and even the threat of liability disillusioned many health-care workers.

For Christians in medicine, when such challenges come, the temptation is to assimilate and be like everyone else (which often involves hardening or cynicism) or to withdraw and become isolated. But Bavinck’s point is that the historic Christian response to such pressures is neither; while holding to orthodoxy, we must also learn to be like Daniel in Babylon, faithfully carrying out the calling of the profession. This requires doing the hard work of cultural apologetics for this subculture called medicine—learning to stay engaged with our vocation while staying faithful to our historic Christian faith. 

Can Only Theology Save Medicine?

Jeffrey Bishop, an Eastern Orthodox physician-turned-theologian, wrote a masterful critique of modern medicine titled The Anticipatory Corpse. After painting a pessimistic picture of the philosophies of modern medicine, he ends with a rhetorical question: “Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?”

As I near the end of my seminary training, I realize this question is what I’ve been trying to answer all along. Unlike Bishop, however, I dare answer with an enthusiastic “Yes!”

I remain hopeful not because I’m convinced of the human ability to achieve the greater good by more advances. But by studying theology in the context of working as a physician, I see it’s possible to hope in the absolute sovereignty of our unchanging God, who also enables doctors and nurses to care for the ill. In response, it’s a joy to learn to practice medicine coram Deo, “in the fear of the Lord who is the beginning of wisdom.” Just as David “served the purpose of God in his own generation” (Acts 13:36), I’m praying to do the same every time I walk into my hospital.