N. GraySutanto, God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology. London: T&T Clark, 2024, viii + 220pp. 103. 50

N. Gray Sutanto's project is a historical theological anthropology for constructive engagement with contemporary issues. Sutanto is among the leaders of a retrieval in Bavinck studies set on bringing his theology to bear on contemporary dogmatic concerns. Building on his previous work, God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology (T&T Clark), Sutanto presents Bavinck as a helpful conversation partner for engaging questions concerning personality and the conscience, issues in the cognitive science of religion, and issues related to christology, the imago dei, ethics, sin, race, and eschatology. To do so, Sutanto provides a close reading of Bavinck's thought from across his corpus, often relying on untranslated or under-utilized works, addressing lacunae in the secondary literature, or polemically correcting what he sees as misreadings of Bavinck's views. Since the translation of Bavinck's four-volume Reformed Dogmatics in 2008, and the subsequent translation work of several other key texts on ethics, worldview, and psychology, Bavinck studies have gained significant momentum in the English-speaking theological world. Bavinck's unique idiom, harmonizing classical concerns and doctrine with distinctively modern conversation partners and impulses, proves particularly interesting for this study of theological anthropology. Following a broad creation-fall-redemption-consummation ordering, Sutanto's volume works through a series of issues that can at times feel ad hoc, but seems like something of a necessity in theological anthropology unless someone is willing to devote multiple volumes to the endeavor (Kelsey's two-volume work Eccentric Existence comes to mind). Rather than developing a full-orbed account, therefore, Sutanto addresses topics that Bavinck emphasizes in his own corpus and which speak into our own contemporary context. This includes issues related to affect theory, phenomenology, and the cognitive science of religion. These emphases provide Sutanto with a unique angle on traditional Reformed impulses, bringing to the fore topics like the “psychical effects of sin” in an account of the fall. Part exposition of Bavinck and part application of Bavinck's insights into contemporary conversations, Sutanto's project models what retrieving a figure like Bavinck can accomplish. As his project unfolds, Sutanto reveals how the image of God in Bavinck's thought is not only about individual selfhood but also addresses corporate dynamics. This leads him to give an account of sin, for instance, that goes beyond individual sinfulness (without minimizing it) and addresses egocentricity on a broader corporate level. Bavinck's impulse, along with Sutanto's exposition of him, gives particular attention to the necessity of social ethics in an account of theological anthropology. Nonetheless, in making these moves, Bavinck does not leave behind his more traditional impulses – Bavinck continues to be both orthodox and modern – and his account of sin addresses the “organizing principle” as a sort of egocentricity, self-glorification, or even self-divinization. Likewise, the contrast and remedy of this egocentricity is regeneration, where a new foundational principle of life – the love of God – is poured into the soul by the Spirit. Fittingly, following his discussion of the organic and communal nature of sin, and the ethical impulse embedded in a communal understanding of the imago dei, Sutanto offers two chapters on race: “Chapter 6: Race and History” and “Chapter 7: Race and Religion.” The first of these two chapters narrates the current scholarship on race in neo-Calvinism, a conversation Sutanto is much invested in, while simultaneously naming the “checkered legacy” of that theological movement and advancing Bavinck as a useful corrective. In expositions of Bavinck's texts warning against the rise of German nationalism, Sutanto unfolds the logic of Bavinck's theological anthropology, showing the explanatory power of that account to unveil the depraved logic governing claims to Aryan nationalism within his own nineteenth-century context. It is in this discussion that Sutanto's previous analysis comes into its own, showing how Bavinck's anthropology not only anticipated the rise of this form of racism in his account of sin and evil but also provided him with the theological lenses to recognize the roots of this racism forming, and how those roots would fund and support communal egocentricity. This then sets the stage for Chapter 7 to address Bavinck's positive vision against the backdrop of his prophetic insight. Addressing the distinctively religious nature of human beings, Sutanto turns to a more granular study of human diversity using the creation-fall-redemption-consummation framework (sometimes referred to as the “fourfold state” of humankind). Sutanto ends his volume with a chapter entitled “Consummation Anyway,” playing off the more common focus on incarnation anyway. Rather than inquiring into the necessity of the incarnation regardless of a fall, Sutanto shifts his attention to the consummation of all things, and the possibility of the created order knowing consummation apart from Christ. Advancing Bavinck's covenant theology and understanding of the necessity of grace for humanity to achieve its supernatural end, Sutanto shows how Bavinck's theology accounts for this reality without the necessity of the incarnation. This leads to the final chapter of the volume, expositing Bavinck's account of the beatific vision. Focusing on the ethical, covenantal, and mystical aspects of the beatific vision, Sutanto shows that Bavinck's account actually follows similar trajectories to John Owen's christologically focused articulation of the vision. While students of Bavinck and those interested in the history of Reformed theology will certainly find much here to savor, what this book offers most is a kind of roadmap to retrieval. What Sutanto models is not a mere rehearsal of Bavinck's theology, but an attempt to reach into its inner logic to reveal how it might be utilized for contemporary theological work. There are certainly times where the focus feels a bit too narrowly confined to Bavinck himself for folks who are not already invested in his work, but let me suggest that this too is an advantage of the work. Too often readers understand theologians ephemerally or in a sort of ad hoc manner and lose the contours and fruit of their theological system. When this happens, the true logic of their accounts, positively or negatively, remains hidden under the surface, and readers miss the formal shaping of their accounts. By investing so deeply in Bavinck, Sutanto brings to light the deeper movements of his work. Likewise, God and Humanity can serve as a helpful model for how to retrieve historical figures for contemporary dogmatic work – not to repristinate our favorite historical theologians, but to discover and utilize figures whose insights and even failures can illuminate constructive paths. This book will be a helpful guide to those engaging these questions in theological anthropology, the work of Herman Bavinck, and the history of Reformed Dogmatics.