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Herman Bavinck and Thomas Reid on Perception and Knowing God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2018

Nathaniel Sutanto
Nathaniel Sutanto*
Affiliation:
New College, University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that Kant had erected an epistemological boundary between mental representations and external reality that precipitates an anxiety in modern theologians about whether one can properly refer to God. As a way past this boundary, Wolterstorff's Reformed epistemology retrieves Thomas Reid's account of perception as an alternative to Kant, according to which knowledge of external objects is direct and immediate. Further, Wolterstorff points to the Dutch neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck as one who bears many “reidian” elements in his epistemology, especially in the way in which Bavinck argues that the epistemic accessibility of the external world ought to be taken for granted. The thesis of this present paper, however, is that a closer investigation of Bavinck's account of perception reveals that he, unlike Reid, accepts the gap between mental representations and external objects, such that representations are those through which we know the world. Bavinck affirms that a correspondence between the two can be obtained by an appeal to the resources found in Christian revelation. In effect, what emerges in a close comparison of Bavinck and Reid is that Bavinck's account is an alternative theological response to the kantian boundary—one according to which mental representations correspond with external objects because both participate in an organically connected cosmos shaped by a Triune God.

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Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 111 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 115 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2018 

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References

1 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?” Modern Theology 14 (1998) 1–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy,” in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (ed. Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 156–68.

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6 For an example of the former, see Allison, Henry, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Smith, A. D., The Problem of Perception (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, for the latter. See also Pinkard's, Terry German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

7 Taylor, Charles and Dreyfus, Hubert, Retrieving Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) 10 Google Scholar. To be sure, the account of realism by Taylor and Dreyfus differs significantly from Reid's or, say, Yadav's, as Taylor and Dreyfus draw from Heidegger and 18th century Romanticism. See also Taylor, Charles, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, “Herman Bavinck—Proto Reformed Epistemologist,” Calvin Theological Journal 45 (2010) 133–46Google Scholar.

9 Plantinga, Alvin, “Reason and Belief in God,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (ed. Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991) 16–93 Google Scholar; Wolterstorff, “Herman Bavinck—Proto Reformed Epistemologist.” John Bolt acknowledges this connection in an editorial footnote in Bavinck, Herman, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Prolegomena (ed. Bolt, John; trans. Vriend, John; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004) 590 n. 73Google Scholar. Hereafter, RD. In a recent monograph that attempts to connect Barth with Plantinga, Kevin Diller continues to echo that Plantinga's “critical realism” draws from Bavinck and Kuyper (Theology's Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a Unified Response [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014] 108–109). For a rather different emphasis on Barth's theological epistemology, see Westerholm, Martin, The Ordering of the Christian Mind: Karl Barth and Theological Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bavinck, Herman, “Foreword to the First Edition (Volume 1) of the Gereformeerde Dogmatiek ,” CTJ (trans. Bolt, John; 2010) 9–10 Google Scholar, at 10. George Harinck comments that Bavinck “was part and parcel of Modern culture and contributed to its character and direction,” in “The Religious Character of Modernism and the Modern Character of Religion: A Case Study of Herman Bavinck's Engagement with Modern Culture,” SBET 29 (2011) 61–76, at 62.

11 Bavinck, Herman, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing, (Kampen: Kok, 1929) 16 Google Scholar. Dutch original: “In beide gevallen [empiricism and rationalism] en naar beide richtingen wordt de harmonie van subject en object van kennen en zijn verbroken.” Unless otherwise stated, translations are my own.

12 The literature that explores Bavinck's constructive theology and epistemology in English continues to grow from numerous avenues in the last decade. See, for example, van der Kooi, Cornelis, “The Appeal to the Inner Testimony of the Spirit, Especially in H. Bavinck,” JRT 2 (2008) 103–12Google Scholar; Mattson, Brian G., Restored to Our Destiny: Eschatology & the Image of God in Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics (Leiden: Brill, 2012) 19–64 Google Scholar; Eglinton, James, Trinity and Organism: Toward a New Reading of Herman Bavinck's Organic Motif, (London: T&T Clark, 2012)Google Scholar; Huttinga, Wolter, “‘Marie Antoinette’ or Mystical Depth?: Herman Bavinck on Theology as Queen of the Sciences,” in Neo-Calvinism and the French Revolution (ed. Eglinton, James and Harinck, George; London: Bloomsbury, 2014) 143–54Google Scholar; Macleod, Donald, “Bavinck's Prolegomena: Fresh Light on Amsterdam, Old Princeton, and Cornelius Van Til,” WTJ 68 (2006) 261–82Google Scholar; Oliphint, K. Scott, “Bavinck's Realism, The Logos Principle, and Sola Scriptura ,” WTJ 72 (2010) 359–90Google Scholar. Pass, Bruce, “Herman Bavinck and the Problem of New Wine in Old Wineskins,” IJST 17 (2015) 1–18 Google Scholar; Eglinton, James, “ Vox Theologiae: Boldness and Humility in Public Theological Speech,” IJPT 9 (2015) 5–28 Google Scholar; Sutanto, Nathaniel Gray, “Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin,” IJST 18 (2016) 174–90Google Scholar.

13 Henk van den Belt suggests that Bavinck's epistemology is “between naïve realism and the transcendental idealism of Kant” (The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust [Leiden: Brill, 2008] 267). See also Van der Kooi, “Inner Testimony,” 107–108.

14 Muller, Richard A., Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (4 vols; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003)Google Scholar; idem, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1986); idem, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); idem, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); idem, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012); Van Asselt, Willem J., Pleitzer, Theo J., Rouwendal, Pieter L., and Wisse, Maarteen, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011)Google Scholar; Selderhuis, Herman (ed.), A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark; Carlisle, PA: Paternoster Press, 1999); Steinmetz, David, Calvin in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Goudriaan, Aza, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625–1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus van Mastricht, and Antonius Driessen (Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar.

While some have suggested that Bavinck's epistemology is a retrieval of Thomism within a 19–20th century context (see, for example, Sytsma, David, “Herman Bavinck's Thomistic Epistemology: the Argument and Sources of his Principia of Science,” in Five Studies in the Thought of Herman Bavinck: A Creator of Modern Dutch Theology [ed. Bolt, John; Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011] 1–56)Google Scholar, others observe that Bavinck was much more willing to modify his epistemology with the tools provided by modern philosophy, notwithstanding Bavinck's own criticisms of Thomas, in some important respects. See, in this regard, van den Belt, Henk, “Religion as Revelation: The Development of Herman Bavinck's View from a Reformed Orthodox to a Neo-Calvinist Approach,” TBR 4 (2013) 9–31 Google Scholar.

15 As it will become clearer below, for Bavinck the Triune God is the being in which unity-and-diversity is archetypally exemplified, such that God's creation, too, will bear an analogical shape. The cosmos, therefore, is composed of parts that are integrally related to one another as a single organism.

16 Reid, Thomas, “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man” in The Works of Thomas Reid, D. D.: Now Fully Collected, With Selections from His Unpublished Letters (ed. Hamilton, William; Edinburgh: Machlachlan, Stewart and Co., 1846) 215–510, at 369Google Scholar. The narrative that follows here is a familiar one; Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus recently present another rendition of this narrative in their Retrieving Realism, 1–26.

17 Wolterstoff, Nicholas, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 44 Google Scholar. Wolterstorff uses the 1858 edition of Hamilton's collected works of Thomas Reid. Nichols's, Ryan Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar also offers an account of Reid's epistemology largely consistent with Wolterstorff's, but a focus of this essay is Wolterstorff's retrieval of Reid.

18 Reid, “Intellectual Powers of Man,” 369.

19 Ibid., 299.

20 Ibid., 300.

21 Ibid., 299.

22 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, 103. Wolterstorff dubs what I call here the theory of mediation “the way of Ideas.” Reid, of course, had not yet read Kant, as Kant was his contemporary.

23 Ibid., 90.

24 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?” 12.

25 Bavinck, RD, 1:224. Bavinck follows Voetius and the Reformed scholastics in their objections against modern epistemology here.

26 Ibid., 227–28.

27 Ibid., 228. See also pages 216–20. Hegel and Schleiermacher, who rose above the epistemology prevalent in their day are the ones who finally reconnected “subject and object,” in Bavinck's judgment, in ibid., 521.

28 Bavinck, RD, 1:340. Bavinck's historical analysis is consistent with Brown, James, Subject and Object in Modern Theology: The Croall Lectures Given in the University of Edinburgh 1953 (London: SCM Press, 1953) 19–20 Google Scholar, 168.

29 Bavinck, Herman, “The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl,” TBR 3 (trans. Bolt, John; 2012) 123–63Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 128.

31 Ibid., 158.

32 Among them, of course, is Reid's contention that the results of adopting the theory of mediated knowledge runs against the cherished deliverances of Common Sense.

33 For an elaborate analysis of Reid on this, see Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, 61–74. One has in view here objectual apprehension, but Reid, it seems, would also affirm direct propositional apprehension.

34 Reid, “Intellectual Powers of Man,” 254.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 258–59.

37 Ibid., 260.

38 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, 98 [italics in original].

39 Wolterstorff, “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?,” 17 [italics added].

40 Ibid., 18.

41 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, 159 [italics in original]. This is a straightforward account of direct realism.

42 Bavinck, RD, 1:229.

43 Bavinck, “Albrecht Ritschl,” 131.

44 Bavinck, RD, 1:228 [italics added].

45 Ibid., 223–24 [italics added].

46 Ibid., 224 [italics added].

47 In this way Bavinck's analysis of knowledge differs from one articulation of Hegel's, in which one “cannot begin from the assumption that the determinations or categories of thought and reality are conceivably distinct from one another, or that they might conceivably ‘correspond’ to one another. It cannot begin with any conceivable distinction between thought and being at all” ( Houlgate, Stephen, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History [2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 2005] 45 Google Scholar). However, it is congenial with another articulation, in which Hegel regards subject and object as distinct but as a pair in relation. For this view, see Adams, Nicholas, The Eclipse of Grace: Divine and Human Action in Hegel (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Despite some of the overlapping epistemological concerns, Bavinck self-consciously distanced himself from Hegel's ontology. On this, see Eglinton, James, “To Be or to Become—That is the Question: Locating the Actualistic in Bavinck's Ontology,” in Revelation and Common Grace (ed. Bowlin, John; vol. 2 of The Kuyper Center Review; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011) 104–24Google Scholar.

48 Bavinck, RD, 1:227. Cf. Sytsma, “Herman Bavinck's Thomistic Epistemology,” 29.

49 Ibid. Again, compare this with one interpretation of Hegel's attempt to connect subject and object: “Hegel's objection is not primarily to Kant's ontology—an ontology in which there are phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things in themselves . . . Hegel's primary objection is to the logic which guides the account—a logic in which phenomena and noumena are opposed, where appearances and things in themselves are utterly separate” (Adams, The Eclipse of Grace, 22–23). There is, of course, an important difference of emphasis. Hegel responds to Kant by offering an alternate account of logic—a logic of distinctions in inseparable relation (thereby vindicating the connection and essential difference between two poles)—whereas Bavinck appeals to a Triune ontology to connect the two poles, as one shall see.

50 Bavinck, RD, 1:220.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid. For Reid one does not need to account for how the belief in causality or necessary truths originate. One merely finds oneself believing these truths (presumably because of how human beings are hard-wired), and one is perfectly justified in believing so.

53 Herman Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing, 18. Dutch original: “uit de eene voorstelling kan hij slechts tot een andere besluiten, maar nooit overbrugt eene redeneering de klove tusschen het denken en het zijn.”

54 Ibid., 20. Dutch original “dat wij in de gewaarwordingen en voorstellingen eene betrouwbare kennis van de objectieve werkelijkheid bezitten.”

55 Ibid. Dutch original: “Dit nu is het feit, dat aan alle gewaarwording en voorstelling ten grondslag ligt. Wie het ontkent, ondermijnt alle waarheid en wetenschap.”

56 Bavinck, Herman, Philosophy of Revelation (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909) 56 Google Scholar; Wijsbegeerte der Openbaring (Kok: Kampen, 1908) 46. It is perhaps significant that Bavinck considered these lectures as a further elaboration upon the themes found in Christelijke wereldbeschouwing. See Philosophy of Revelation, 320 n. 21.

57 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 56.

58 Bavinck, RD, 1:586. This definition of knowledge as agreement of subject and object, and how to account for that agreement is the focus of modern epistemology. Cf. James Brown, Subject and Object in Modern Theology, 20–24. Bavinck elsewhere defines truth this way: “Truth is agreement between thought and reality and thus expresses a relation between the contents of our consciousness and the object of our knowledge” (The Certainty of Faith [trans. Harry der Nederlanden; Ontario: Paideia, 1980] 19).

59 Bavinck, RD, 1:564.

60 In this and the preceding analysis I am in agreement with Cornelis van der Kooi, “Inner Testimony,” 108.

61 Bavinck, RD, 1:228.

62 Ibid., 231.

63 Ibid.

64 Hank van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology, 233.

65 For a thorough account of Bavinck's organic worldview, see James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism.

66 Bavinck, RD, 1:586.

67 Ibid., 2:376 [italics added]. Bavinck points to Romanticism as an origin of the organic idea, and to Hegel and Schleiermacher for their efforts to overcome subject and object in RD 1:260, 521.

68 Ibid., 1:227.

69 Sytsma, “Herman Bavinck's Thomistic Epistemology,” 29 n. 83. Bavinck's use of Aquinas, however, should not eclipse the substantive criticisms Bavinck lodges against Aquinas throughout his oeuvre. Recent commentators also catalogue aspects of Bavinck's critique of Thomas. This includes critiques on Thomas's view of mystery and natural theology (in Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 97–99), on the function of proofs and ontology (in Mattson, Restored to Our Destiny, 14–15, 45, 132), and on the relationship between nature and grace and epistemology (in Mattson, Brian, “A Soft Spot for Paganism?: Herman Bavinck and ‘Insider Movements,’” TBR 4 (2013) 32–43, at 36, 40–42Google Scholar).

70 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae (trans. Browne, Michael Cardinal; London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968)Google Scholar I, q. 85, a. 2. Hereafter, ST.

71 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 85, a. 2. See also ST, 1. Q. 79, 84, which deals specifically with the intellect and knowledge of material objects, respectively. For a nice elucidation of Thomas on the intellect and the soul in the act of perception, in relation to the claim that the human soul exists both subsistently and inherently, see Kilma, Gyula, “Aquinas on the Materiality of the Human Soul and the Immateriality of the Human Intellect,” Philosophical Investigations 32 (2009) 163–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Sytsma's analysis in “Herman Bavinck's Thomistic Epistemology,” though thorough, moves back and forth between Bavinck's statements and the scholastic sources from which Bavinck drew. This creates the impression that Bavinck is merely reproducing those sources in an act of re-assertion. It seems more fruitful to me instead to pay attention to Bavinck's organic worldview first, and, taking that into account, then to interpret particular portions of his text—focusing on how he uses his sources more closely. However, even with that said, Sytsma's analysis pays more attention to Bavinck's scholastic (medieval and Reformed) sources within his discussion of general epistemology, while paying significantly less attention to Bavinck's appreciation of modern thinkers throughout his oeuvre and his structural use of the subject-object dilemma.

73 Bavinck, RD, 2:392.

74 Bavinck, Herman, “The Pros and Cons of a Dogmatic System,” TBR 5 (trans. Kloosterman, Nelson D.; 2014) 90–103 Google Scholar (especially pages 90–94); Bavinck, Herman, ‘Christendom en Natuurwetenschap’ in Kennis en Leven: Opstellen en artikelen uit vroegere jaren, (ed. Bavinck, C. B.; Kampen: Kok, 1922) 184–202, especially pages 201–202Google Scholar.

75 Bavinck, Christelijke wereldbeschouwing, 28. Dutch original: “De leer van de schepping aller dingen door het Woord Gods is de verklaring van alle kennen en weten, de onderstelling van de correspondantie tusschen subject en object.”

76 Ibid., 32–33. Brian Mattson observes that in such claims one can discern a transcendental direction in Bavinck's thinking in his Restored to Our Destiny, 36–37, 41–42, 44.

77 Bavinck, RD, 1:231. The sense of possible, here, I take to be both metaphysical and epistemological. Only when one believes (epistemologically) in the work of Logos can one be warranted to believe that science is possible. Also, only because the Logos is actively working is science metaphysically possible.

78 I am grateful to George Harinck for this suggestion.

79 Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid, 103.

80 As it stands Bavinck's account of the epistemic situation is externalist in character, but this may not be the whole picture. Further, I use the material conditional here (rather than the biconditional of Wolterstorff's presentation of Reid) to convey that Bavinck is interested not in discovering what needs rationally to be the case for subject and object to be in correspondence, but rather, Bavinck is explicating what he thinks Christian revelation displays to be the case when the correspondence is obtained.

81 This, of course, depends upon whether one is convinced that a proper distinction should obtain between theology and philosophy, and on how one configures the relationship. For a recent monograph that does not follow this distinction, see Yadav, The Problem of Perception. Wolterstorff and Plantinga, in any case, hold to an Augustinian model of Christian philosophy, according to which the deliverances of faith should be freely deployed in one's philosophical work. See Wolterstorff, “How Philosophical Theology Became Possible,” 167–68; Plantinga, Alvin, “Augustinian Christian Philosophy,” The Monist 75 (1992) 316–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the way in which Wolterstorff's theology of Shalom informs his philosophical theorizing, see Shannon, Nathan D., Shalom and the Ethics of Belief: Nicholas Wolterstorff's Theory of Situated Rationality (Eugene, OR: PickWick, 2015)Google Scholar.

82 Wolterstorff, “Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover From Kant?,” 18.

83 Bavinck, RD, 2:190.

84 Ibid. [italics added]. Following Schleiermacher, Bavinck argues that the “core of our self-consciousness is, as Schleiermacher perceived much more clearly than Kant, not autonomy but a sense of dependence. In the act of becoming conscious of ourselves we become conscious of ourselves as creatures” (Philosophy of Revelation, 66). Revelation is located in the outside world and internally, directly, in consciousness: “Not evolution, but revelation, is the secret of the mind; in our-selfconsciousness, independently of our co-operation and apart from our will, the reality of our ego and of the world is revealed to us” (Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 69). Cf. Brock, Cory and Sutanto, Nathaniel Gray, “Herman Bavinck's Reformed Eclecticism: On Catholicity, Consciousness, and Theological Epistemology,” SJT 70 (2017) 310–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Ibid., 190.

86 Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation, 325 n. 20.