Reformed Social Ethics: Perspectives on Society, Culture, State, Church, and the Kingdom of God - Hardcover

by Herman Bavinck (Author), John Bolt (Editor)

In the process of translating Herman Bavinck's Reformed Ethics, John Bolt and his editorial colleagues discovered that the social ethics portion was unfinished. The first section will now be published as Reformed Ethics, vol. 3. The other five sections were outlined by Bavinck, but not completed. Following Bavinck's outline, John Bolt has reconstructed those last five sections on the basis of his extensive knowledge of Bavinck's work, culling Bavinck's other writings, in both Dutch and English, to summarize his teachings.

This companion to Reformed Ethics offers readers Bavinck's main convictions and perspectives on critical topics of social ethics: society, art, scholarship, education, the state, the church, humanity, and the kingdom of God.

Reformed Social Ethics completes the Reformed Ethics project and provides readers with a fuller picture of Bavinck's ethics. It will also be packaged with Bavinck's Reformed Ethics in a specially priced four-volume set.

Back Jacket

This companion to Herman Bavinck's Reformed Ethics presents Bavinck's main convictions and perspectives on critical topics of social ethics: society, art, scholarship, education, the state, the church, humanity, and the kingdom of God.

"The social media age has not been kind to Christian social ethics. The kind of short form, fragmentary thinking--always performed before an aggressive and divided audience--normalized in that setting risks turning the Christian social ethicist into a cybergladiator whose bombastic views are largely determined by his need not to be his nemesis. Herman Bavinck warned against such reactionary dogmatism. In the works brought together as Reformed Social Ethics, we find an example often missing in our day: a Christian ethicist thinking carefully about complex issues in the light of Scripture and tradition rather than in the blue light of a smartphone."
--James Eglinton, New College, University of Edinburgh

"Our debt of gratitude to John Bolt for reintroducing Bavinck to the Anglophone world continues to grow with this companion to the Reformed Ethics. Here, Bavinck's writings on matters of deep moral interest are not only translated for the first time but, where they are incomplete, Bolt provides his own learned judgments to amplify or develop arguments in keeping with the spirit of Bavinck's thought. Readers will find here not only matters of historical interest but also an exemplary model for a Reformed engagement with perennial social issues."
--N. Gray Sutanto, Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington DC

Author Biography

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) succeeded Abraham Kuyper as professor of systematic theology at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1902.

John Bolt (PhD, University of St. Michael's College) is the Jean and Kenneth Baker Professor of Systematic Theology, emeritus, at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He edited Bavinck's four-volume Reformed Dogmatics.