Personality and Worldview

by Johan Herman Bavinck, Johan Herman Bavinck, James Eglinton (Translator)

An Examination of Worldview, Worldvision, and the Soul by Dutch-Reformed Theologian J. H. Bavinck, Translated into English for the First Time

Modern evangelicals differ on their concept of “worldview.” Many have varying definitions of it and some even consider it to be a wholly unhelpful term in understanding the world around them. This volume by Johan Herman Bavinck examines the relationship between the soul, each human’s unique personality, and worldview—acknowledging the importance of worldview while recognizing the dangers if worldviews are misapplied. 

Personality and Worldview by J. H. Bavinck, nephew and student of Dutch-Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, creates a distinction between a worldvision (which all people have) and a worldview (which only few have in a mature and wise way). Profoundly influenced by the works of St. Augustine, Bavinck challenges readers to allow the gospel to reshape their worldviews and their personalities as they pursue godly wisdom. Translated into English for the first time by James Eglinton, Bavinck’s accessible prose, personal applications, and more will greatly serve pastors, students, and laypeople alike. 

Foreword by Timothy  Keller writes, “I could not be happier that Johan Herman Bavinck’s Personality and Worldview has been made accessible to the English-speaking world. It is an important work, perhaps even what we call a ‘game-changer.’” Edited and Translated by James  An expert scholar and author on the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition  Introduction by the  Provides an overview of the book and a brief introduction to Johan Herman Bavinck’s life For Readers Who Enjoy Herman  Works as a follow-up text to Herman Bavinck’s Christian Worldview

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Christian, Psychology, Cultural, Christian Living, Christian Non Fiction

208 pages, Hardcover

Published April 18, 2023

About the author

Johan Herman Bavinck (see also J.H. Bavinck) was a Dutch pastor, missionary and theologian.

Bavinck was born in Rotterdam as the second son of Reverend Coenraad Bernardus Bavinck. He attended the Marnix Gymnasium there. Both his father and his grandfather Jan Bavinck were pastors. His uncle was Herman Bavinck, pastor and Professor of Dogmatics at the theological school in Kampen and at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam

Reviews

[Christian Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book for our current moment of cultural apologetics. Bavinck remains impressively relevant. This book is worth the introduction alone.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the relationship between Personality and worldview? Here the nephew and student of the famous theologian Herman Bavinck wrote this book to help answer this question. Like his uncle, Johan Herman Bavinck writes in a nuances and careful matter. It is in a sense inter-disciplinary that is part philosophical, part theological and part psychological while also being historically conscious, global in perspective and biblically driven in terms of the informing worldview that the author is trying to be faithful to. Thinkers that this book interact with include Kant, Descartes, Confucius and Lao Tzu. This book was originally lectures that J.H. Bavinck delivered to engineering students in the winter of 1927 and later turned into a book. The publisher Crossway did the Christians world of scholarship a big favor when this book is translated into English in 2023. I am glad for the translation team that had this published in English so we can benefit from this book today. If you are interested in apologetics, worldviews, human nature and the history of the thoughts on man, this book is for you!
The book begins with a foreword by Timothy Keller, an editor’s introduction and then eight main chapters. The Editor’s Introduction is a must-read, which gives the background to the book and a summary of what this book is about. Chapter one is on the struggle for a worldview and here the author made an important category of the distinction between a world vision and a worldview, with world vision being something everything has and given to them often from society and their parents while a worldview is the goal of a carefully thought out worldview. This is extremely helpful of a category. Chapter two is on the essence of personality where J.H. Bavinck laid out threefold description of a personality is. I really enjoyed chapter three on the Problem of Unity and the chapter discusses animism, pantheism, dualism, Platonism/neoPlatonism, monism and Christianity. Chapter four is on Passive knowing and chapter five balance that with discussion about the power of reason (and also its limitations). Chapter six is on the reaction of the Conscience and chapter seven is on mysticism versus revelation. Chapter eight ends with personality and worldview.
I really enjoyed this book for many aspects of the book. First it does give us some apologetics though its not fully fleshed out Reformed apologetics like what you see with Cornelius Van Til. Still there’s that flavor of a Reformed bent apologetics especially with the chapter on the problem of unity and the chapter on passive knowledge and the power of reason. I also thought it introduced the helpful category of worldvision, which explains why so many people have in a sense a worldview while also not having one. J.H. Bavinck being a missionary to Indonesia in the East also shaped this book’s discussion of Eastern thought and Eastern religion which I appreciate as I was reading this book while going to a far flung part of Asia to teach biblical matters. I hope this book becomes a mainstream classic for Christian thought in the same level as Francis Schaeffer’s classics since the category of worldvision and worldview is so important and nuanced. I highly recommend this book.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Crossway without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

[Adam Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book would be 3 or 4 star if it weren’t for the last chapter. A seriously dense book to get through, but a tremendous insight into how all humans are simultaneously running toward and away from the living God. The last chapter is seriously special, not a dull paragraph in sight- and a particularly brilliant diagnosis and critique of relativism. If you read this book, be prepared for a heavy philosophy lesson (still don’t think I understand half of it), but the pay-off is huge.

[Rylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[Christianity] has that breadth of vision toward life and the world that elevates the human being. It recognizes the different spheres, the different terrains of things that happen in their distinctiveness. It does no damage to the individual in relation to the crowd or to the whole in relation to the parts. It peers into the world with a breadth and roominess that can indeed be painful for our thinking but that creates space for love, for paying attention to each thing in its particularity. And finally, it is also brace enough to recognize that we do not yet see the reconciliation of the many apparent contradictions but that we must believingly await that we will indeed eventually see it, when the fracture of our own soul itself will be taken away." - p.160

"You could say, 'Tell me who you are, and I will tell you what your worldview will be like.' You could also invert this: 'Tell me what your worldview is like, and I will tell what you will become.' A worldview is able to build up a person's life but is also powerful enough to leave it in ruins." - p.177

This book reminded me of Dooyeweerd's Roots of Western Culture or In the Twilight of Western Thought. Bavinck does a stronger job of emphasizing that fact that simply "spotting" the presuppositions does not account for the way we live. We are all a mess of contradictions--the antithesis as Dooyeweerd insists runs through every human heart. "The human heart thirsts for God," Bavinck writes, "needs God, feels dependent on him, and at the same time stands in enmity against him. It is a not willing and yet also a willing, a seeking that is no seeking. That contrariety in the human soul finds its deepest roots in the fact that in his own I-ness, the human being does not want to be ruled by God...and must hold God outside the sphere of his life with wordless resolve." The pursuit of a worldview normed by Christ (which is equally and simultaneously the receiving of a worldview by God's gracious revelation) is not merely an intellectual endeavor but a redemptive one: it is the truth, as Bavinck reminds readers again and again, that will set us wretched folks free (John 8:32-36).

[Faith Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought the hardcover for a teenager in a phase of analyzing everyone’s personality - but I didn’t know anything about it. So I attempted to skim it before giving it away— this book is so deep i couldnt skim well but i think i got most of it. Shows how worldview affects personality & order in life (stability in responding and translating experiences into thoughts)

Directly from book:

Pg 35
“In their works lies an earnest seeking for the objective, for the certainty of the truth, so that we would be able to build our lives on it. Their thinking is an attempt to approach the riches of reality without prejudice and to search through its secrets. They struggled to free themselves from all sorts of subjective prejudices in their world-visions and to tread humbly toward the truth itself. We can indeed live as though there is a God or no God, as though there are norms or no norms, but ultimately we will want to know [weten] whether that great as though that we base our lives on can withstand the test of objective judgment. That is no game; it is not a hobby. It is alarming in its inevitability because otherwise, everything, our life itself, is a leap into the abyss. A certain self-denial is found in all philosophical thinking —the self-denial of a person who feels that the worldvision that his life's practice is built on and that is connected to his nature and character could indeed be wrong. Therein lies honesty, depth, and majesty.
As such, you sense that it is not easy to be objective. It is perhaps the weightiest demand that can ever be placed on someone-to make oneself free of the intuitive vision toward which he is naturally in-clined. It is only with great difficulty that someone who is materialistic in the practice of life can proceed from objective considerations to the conclusion that it is precisely the spiritual that is central and dominant because at the moment he draws this conclusion, he judges his own life. And conversely, it is only with great difficulty that the idealist who is mystically and ascetically inclined will allow himself to be convinced of the hard, sober realness of material reality.”
Pg 39

A human being needs God, his whole soul asks after God, and outside God his seeking and thinking cannot find any peace. And thus, every worldview ends in God. It is an approaching toward the power of God; it is carried and compelled by a longing for God. Conversely, it is equally applicable to every worldview that it is a fleeing from God, a pulling back from God, a not daring to accept God, because all recognition of God is a judgment of self. Finding God always means losing self. And thus, all seeking always pulls back. We can say, every person seeks God, and we can also say, there is no one who seeks God. No one dares to give himself over fully. That complete self-denial lies beyond human capacities.
Each worldview is a living proof of that notable discord that abides in the human soul. A human being does not rise above it. This is because the relationship between the human being and God is always awry.
Sin's delicate poison has sunk into all his powers and desires. A human being cannot do other than both seek God, because he longs for him in the deepest part of his being, and evade him, because he fears and hates him with every fiber of his being.
It is precisely this [dynamic] that makes the battle of the worldviews so great and wondrous. It is not a cozy discussion. It always contains tension and depth. In his worldview, a person often approaches God— the highest truth —more closely than he expresses through his life.
Life is so clumsy and so heavy, so difficult to push and to move onto a different path. Life itself is much more godless than thinking is. In (the act of, considering, the longing for God can express itself much more tenderly and beautifully than in the rough material of hard, daily ex-perience. Therefore, the struggle is much more refined and subtle here.

You have the tongue and other parts of the mouth and throat, which make us conscious of taste. In short, the soul is almost always busy receiving. The world never stops influencing the soul. This is so strong that nowhere near all the impressions that rush at the soul can come to the consciousness. At this moment there are visible things that want to enter me through my eyes, sounds from the street that reach my ears, all sorts of olfactory sensations, sensations of warmth, taste, and so on that offer themselves to me. My soul is not equipped to experience all of them consciously and simultaneously in a single moment, and thus it must apply a certain selectivity. It does this in its attentiveness. I do not take in all sorts of other impressions that are present, and I focus, for example, only on the sound of the human voice that is speaking to me. But in all this, the soul is receptive. Its posture to the external world is the continuous request "Speak to me!" And the soul itself listens, receives.
In the second place, we can say of the soul that it conserves.

In the last place, we can say, the soul longs. That is a new power within it. It does not accept the world as the things within it present themselves.
Rather, it always wants to bring about changes within it. It re-forms the world according to its own taste. To [the soul), reality is still possibil.-ity, from which it can make everything. It actively intervenes in what happens. It exerts itself in influencing things as they occur. It is like a servant that receives and bows down, but it is also a king that rules and even makes his will to be done. It has ideals and pursues them, and it has desires that it seeks to fulfill. And so it advances through life and intervenes in the delicate game of everyday occurrences.
You will admit that we encounter quite a sum of powers in the soul.
Passive, in receiving and appreciating, but also active, in connecting and longing. There are those that remain hidden within a person, in conserving and thinking. There are also those that move outward, in the great willing that is rooted in longing. The soul is so wondrously multifaceted that you can barely imagine its richness adequately. It is a fine tool that is suitable for everything, that hides a world of diversity within itself. Only when you can see and imagine that, can you understand and wonder at it.
When we see all these functions more closely, we notice that this multifaceted (nature) can also be the cause of its discord. The external world works its influence on us through the receptive function, and we (exercise our influence) on the external world through the will. It15 possible that these two come into conflict and that tension and opposition can exist between them. The inward functions can be disturbed and limited by the (functions] that are directed outward: receiving and willing. In short, the multifaceted nature of the soul can lead to con-trast, to an inner struggle, to difficulties. In personality we understand a soul within which those different functions balance each other out, in which a certain synthesis is found.…

…

All the more noticeable is that the connection within which the functions move toward each other is different for each person. From this, then, every human being's personality bears a different imprint.
The accent seems to be different for each person, and it is precisely in this that we differ so wondrously from each other.

…

have shown how the cables run and where the lamps are and have made others notice that in each person, the cables are wired differently. That is all very important, but it gives rise to other questions: Where does the electricity come from that makes the light show come alive? It is already of great worth if we know (weten) that the soul can receive, can retain, bind, appreciate, and want, but now come the problems: Why does it do so? What is the force that compels it to these activities, that drives it to receive, to retain, and so forth? The fact that the soul can [do these things] absolutely does not mean that it must and really does do them.
Where is the power source that provides for the whole light show, that brings the entire, complex instrument to life?
The motor [driving] the whole enterprise, the entirety of this wonderful light show, is hunger. At first impression, this perhaps sounds strange, but it will quickly become easier for you to imagine. Without that hunger, the soul would be a dead thing, having many capacities but without any urge to put those capacities to use. Now, however, the soul] does set to work. It throws itself at the world. All the functions and powers rooted in it are set to work.
The sort of hunger that this is, to which we must pay attention, is difficult to describe at length. In the first place, we can call it the hunger for self-preservation, for self-cultivation, for self-maintenance. From the beginning onward, it hides within the human being and works within him like a motor. That motor sets in motion the refined powers of perception. That person will regard the world, studying it in order to find the necessary elements for his existence within that world. That hunger drives him into society. He looks to progress within it, asks for honor, value, recognition, a place to develop, possibilities to cultivate his gifts. That hunger influences his thinking, feeling, and willing.

…

That hunger can also reveal itself in all manner of ways and in all sorts of forms. It can be shown in Pride, in ambition, in a need to be praised. It can be revealed in passivity, in self-pity, in the thought that you have been dealt a very poor hand

…

We are just as much members of a fellowship, a moment in a greater "Wir" (we), a part of a more comprehensive whole.
In the third place, we must point to the hunger for God. Because of the nature of the subject, this is more difficult to approach and is also harder to know [kennen), but a deeper consideration of history quickly brings us onto the right path. We especially come to know this hunger of the soul negatively. The human being shows that although he has that which is visible, finite, and temporary, the deepest part of his soul is not satisfied. He remains incomplete, and the greatest creations of culture are not equipped to take away this incompleteness forever. There seems to be something in the human being that sees more, that wants (something] higher, that cannot rest until it has found the invisible, the infinite, the eternal. Where this need comes from, we can leave alone for the time being. History simply shows us this fact. It is a fact that all peoples have reached higher, have sought the eternal, [have sought] God, and that their whole lives have pointed to that seeking.
This deeply rooted impulse in the human soul also sets to work on all the delicate functions and powers like a motor. It stimulates his observations. The human being goes into the world taking note of what points him to God, of what brings him closer to God. It excites his thinking. The human being reaches higher in his thoughts and wants to approach God in his thoughts. He plays along in his feelings; he feels tired, unsatisfied when God feels far from him; and he feels enriched and deepened when he lives near to God. Finally, this impulse influences the life of his will. He serves God, and through all sorts of actions, he tries to come closer (to him]. In short, his life is marinated in a deep and indelible desire for fellowship with God. With one person, that will work more strongly in his intellectual functions, with another in the emotional or practical functions, according to the balance found in that personality, but the need is common to all.
This is (how it is) seen from the human side. From God's side, it corresponds to his revelation, his speaking to the human being, his making himself known, and his approach to the heart and the mind.

…

The human being can feel like a hero who can do anyhing and dares to, like a saint who is actually to good for this word, she a victim who always faces adversity and misery, like a martyr who is opposed by all. Through the entire character, you find the lender of-shoots of this deep and basic instinct. It drives a person, it inspires him, it makes him grasp hold of the world, of life. It makes him fel that he must work at all things, that his life's happiness is at stake.
In the second place, we can point to the hunger for conviviality, for sympathy, friendship, love. The human being is a convivial, social being who naturally seeks contact with others. In the early childhood years, you especially find the connection to father and mother, later to friends, then girlfriends and boyfriends, and later still, this ripens into true love. In all these relationships, it is a matter of sympathy, friendship, and love, with all the differences in form and manner, because of the need for Wirbildung [the cultivation of we], for fellowship, for a losing of yourself into a higher we. This need is also worked into all psychical functions. The human being looks to get to know another, to be attentive to him, to think about him. The human being seeks another, to form a bond, and he feels happy in his love. All the powers of the soul are set in motion, as it were, by this motor, its receptivity, retention, thinking, feeling, and wanting. Again, this social instinct distinguishes itself in a multiplicity of expressions, desires, and sentiments. It can lead to sympathy, mercy, friendliness, self-denial, the need to serve, to help, to support. With all these, however, the deepest sense of being one with your neighbor stands at the foreground: if he suffers, so do we; if he rejoices, we rejoice with him.
All these powers first come to their highest and purest development in strong love. There we indeed have a Wirbildung, two individuals becoming one: a sharing of priorities, of needs, of struggle and of vic-tory, of longing, of disappointment, in short, of all the things of life.
A marriage that brings this fellowship into practice, that rests in that fellowship, enriches and ennobles a person because-and this is what it is primarily about—the individual, being an individual, is indeed one part of our existence, even a very important part of it, but it is far

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

J.H. Bavinck (1895–1964) was the nephew of Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) and a professor of missiology at Kampen Theological School and the Free University of Amsterdam. He had also been a pastor and missionary in Indonesia, so, he was no armchair missiologist. In this book, a translation of Bavinck’s 1928 book Persoonlijkheid en wereldbeschouwing. This was originally a set of lectures for engineering students. The book is thus not overly technical, it is clear, accessible, and straightforward in its approach.

"Worldview" is a concept that is starting to go out of fashion. Keller, in his Foreword, notes some key reasons for this - particularly in North America; it is seen as being:

Individualistic

Rationalistic

Simplistic

Triumphalistic

To this, we could add that it has recently lost favour due to concerns about its ambiguity, and connection to Western-centric and imperialist methods of analysing culture and society. Bavinck’s approach provides an important correction to these misconceptions regarding worldviews, not least because Bavinck was fully acquainted with East Asian culture as a pastor.

By "personality", Bavinck means “an organized soul that has come to consciousness of itself.”

One of Bavinck’s main theses is the intriguing distinction he makes between a worldview and a worldvision. He maintains that we all have a worldvision but only a few move to a worldview.

A person without a worldview is a person without a firm foundation, without a compass, without a vista. He may have a worldvision; he might live, for example, as though there are no norms. But such a worldvision proceeds from himself and is rooted in his nature. He cannot pull himself upward on it, and with it he always remains on the same plane. A person with a worldview, in all cases, has light, sees more widely, more broadly, more deeply. And however much deeper and more objective that worldview is, the more it gives him stability to leave this maze of subjective inclinations and climb up to the height of the life that is grounded in the truth.

Unfortunately, this insight is left largely undeveloped - it would be interesting to trace what mileage this distinction had in Bavinck’s further writings.

In exploring the relationship between personality and worldview, he notes two positions that must be guarded against: that they are one and that they are utterly different.

In chapter 3 especially, we can see in Bavinck two important neo-Calvinist themes: the distinction between creator and creation, and a disdain for dualism. He makes some important points regarding dualism: it disjoints personality, it means that salvation is only possible through world flight and that it leads to mysticism and asceticism.

Chapter 4 provides some fascinating insights into the distinction between Eastern and Westen thinking and an overview of the impact of the Renaissance on British empiricism particularly. Here he provides a devastating critique of the poverty of empiricism in that it devours itself.

Chapter 5 exposes the problems with rationalism, Descartes, and Spinoza. He makes the interesting point that pantheism is a presupposition of rationalism: “Pantheism is not the conclusion of rationalism, but it is its presupposition. Reason only has such power when it is itself god.”

Chapters 4 and 5 show that neither empiricism nor rationalism have explored the depths of personality.

Kant attempted to reconcile empiricism and rationalism, but as Chapter 6 shows, this project was unsuccessful.

Mysticism, a topic Bavinck studied for his doctorate and while he was in Java, comes under scrutiny in Chapter 7. As he observes, mysticism is difficult to define as it is not a single worldview. It is an emphasis on the being of God, and yet he is a formless and utterly other divinity. There is no comfort or salvation in such a god. It results in self-withdrawal from life and groping after eternity. He notes that Christian mysticism is differently focused and maintains the boundary between God and creation.

The final Chapter provides an overview of the main themes. Most people live as if there is no worldview, although it is there in seed form, worldview is the revelation of the personality, although there is often tension between the two. We all need a worldview, as it provides norms, direction, and unity in living. He contrasts two common Western worldviews, atheistic materialism and positive Christianity. Atheistic materialism is never accepted unreservedly, and Christianity, a relationship with the living God, depends not on us but on revelation.

This book is certainly well worth buying. The introduction by Eglington alone is worth the price of the book.

[Eddie Mercado · Rating 4 out of 5]

J.H. Bavinck was on to something. His concept of “world vision” can be considered a precursor to Taylor’s “social imaginary,” but I think Bavinck is better grounded than Taylor.

[Conrade Yap · Rating 4 out of 5]

When doing studies about comparative religion, one of the most common ways is to use the term worldview. Sometimes, we tend to think that worldview is something objectively understood. That is only half the story. What equally matters is the person holding that worldview, for the subjective and the objective are related in more ways than one. In other words, personality affects worldviews. The condition of the soul affects one's outlook on life. More importantly, any understanding of the world is only as good as one's personality. This is the crux of the book about the relationship between the subjective and the objective. Some people think that worldviews are objective while personalities are subjective. The problem is that such dichotomies are false. Both are linked in some or more ways. The gospel breaks down these false dichotomies to give us a concrete understanding of both the self as well as the worldview. Every philosophy, religion, or spiritual quest is a form of searching for God, so says Bavinck. One might want to argue the Person of God, but it is no denying that one searches for some form of transcendence in the name of Truth. Bavinck goes into the quest in two ways.

First, he looks at the essence of personality and asks several questions about how we understand ourselves. He identifies two key marks: "organization and self-consciousness," also known as "an organized soul." This personality comes forth in three ways: Unity; Balance; and Moral. Unity refers to the tendency to organize things and make them as coherent as possible. Moral is a sense of right and wrong, and Balance tries to reach a stable middle ground. While these are traits, very noble ones, the problem lies in the different approaches one takes. For instance, on the problem of unity, how can anyone with a finite mind ever make sense of the infinite universe? How does one reconcile irreconcilable differences and conflicts? Bavinck probes the different religious thoughts and philosophies from East to West to show us the trouble with these efforts to reconcile unity. He studies the spectrum of ideas from both Eastern and Western thought to find that unity involves both active empirical search and passive knowing. Both activity and passivity exist. We cannot deny the existence of a particular world just because we cannot comprehend or explain it. Looking at the rise of the Western Renaissance, Bavinck notes that the revolutionary mood goes deeper than mere intellectual liberation. It is about freedom from authoritarianism or oppressive laws placed upon the common people. He calls it a "song of rebellion" which incidentally masks an inner rebellion against God. Taking a leaf from the 18th Century German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, our worldviews no matter how excellent are mere glimpses of things within our sensory perception and not the whole world. There are things outside our domain of understanding, which places a hard limit on the scope of our worldviews. That is one reason why humility is the path to understanding things beyond ourselves. For the power of reason is finite. Combing rationalistic thought from Aristotle to Descartes; the Middle ages to the Renaissance; Platonism to Neo-Platonism; adopting interpretive strategies from the inductive to the deductive, etc, it is crucial to remember the interpretation differs from person to person. Blavinck summarizes these rather succinctly: "The empiricist lives more from the outward in, and the rationalist more from the inside out." More importantly, he points out to us that no person is mighty enough to know everything.

Blavinck also takes us through the realm of conscience, not only showing us the power of the intellect and the emotions, but also to take us to a soul level in the understanding of knowledge. Perceptions, insights, judgments, and all manner of reality as they appear to us are glimpses of the absolute. He concludes his essays with a take on mysticism and revelation. Just like the way he deals with the philosophical thought in the earlier chapters, he guides us through the various mystical thought from East to West to remind us that those too are efforts to find God. Gradually, he shows us that the Bible has captured all of these thoughts brilliantly.

My Thoughts
==============
How should one make of this book? Three ways to look at it. The first way is to see it as an attempt to link the subjective (personality) with the objective (worldview). All kinds of discoveries are dependent on the use of the perception, the intellect, and the creative mind. Blavinck's mind is formidable in terms of his understanding of the different philosophies and theologies through the ages. Well aware of the spectrum of ideas and worldviews, he probes each of them to find out the root of their interest in the world. This he has done from two fronts: The inner study on personality and the outer on worldviews. Both inform the other. It is futile to isolate the two. The great teacher Qohelet wrote Ecclesiastes to show us the futility of materialism and knowledge. Blavinck seems to play the role of a mini-Ecclesiastes in the realm of philosophy and worldview study.

The second is a survey of attempts to find God. As he observes the different kinds of worldviews, he notices that many of them possess a common thread: They are asking the same kind of questions of life. Different generations may come up with different ideas or discoveries but they all stem from an unchanging fundamental quest for origin, meaning and significance. There is a higher purpose we all seek, and this cannot be found in our own quest. If God had not revealed Himself to us, we are helpless. He makes a great observation about ordinary layperson, that most of them generally do not profess a worldview. Thus, such studies on worldview are dismissed as mere "ivory-tower philosophizing" that is "irrelevant" to the people. Wisely, Blavinck begs to differ. If we are indeed honest with ourselves, the way we see the world, no matter what labels we slap on our lifestyles, we are living out a search for God in our own ways.

The third is about what it means for us. Regardless of our backgrounds and inclinations, we all need God. Blavinck summarizes the general public by placing them in two camps: "atheistic materialism" and "positive Christianity." Though he didn't define or label a third category that combines the two in varying capacities, he leaves it to us to question where we are and where we would want to be. The reader would soon realize that very few people (in particular Christians) are in either category. Most people who call themselves Christians would be a combination of materialism and Christianity. For the unbeliever, Ps 14:1 tells us in no uncertain terms that, "The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." While some might say it is meant for non-Christians, this verse applies to all persons. We can agree that all people are searching for Truth, albeit in their own specific ways. Like the gospel's reminder about the wide and narrow way, many will still choose the former and reject the latter. Bavinck's book will appeal to the academic or the intellect. However, if we cut to the chase and go right to his key point, it is about a search for God that matters to everyone.

This book can be intimidating for some readers but if one presses on, there is a lot to gain in terms of the understanding of the human soul and variety of worldviews.

J. H. Bavinck (1895–1964) was a Dutch pastor, theologian, and missionary to Indonesia. Nephew of Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, he also served as a professor of missiology at the Free University of Amsterdam and the Theological School in Kampen. Some of his other works include An Introduction to the Science of Missions; Between the Beginning and the End; and The Church Between Temple and Mosque.

James Eglinton (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is the Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Bavinck: A Critical Biography, which won the 2020 Gospel Coalition Book of the Year award for history and biography.

Timothy J. Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He is the best-selling author of The Prodigal God and The Reason for God.
Rating: 4.25 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Crossway Publishers via NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

[Tyler Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb

[Patrick S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting to read presuppositional apologetic topics pre-1970s. Cornelius Van Til was writing around 1950s and usually (before the 2000s) you really needed a decade or two before people started interacting with the subject well enough (one could argue that's needed these days as well).

Here, Bavinck isn't so much a presuppositionalist per se, but a lot of this book has a number of elements that will be familiar to those in the presup camp. First of all the translation and the explanation of the translation is top notch. Reasons givens for choices and inclusions or editing are made right off the bat and more translated works could use this type of rigor. I applaud James Eglinton for it.

Bavinck starts where I believe all people should start and that's defining his terms. Worldview, personality, and worldvision are his starting points and descriptions of them are the necessary lifeblood in understanding where he's coming from and the points he's trying to make. Here, I think many VanTil/Bahnsen presuppositionalists will find useful the distinction between "worldvision" and "worldview" and it's something to ponder. What Bavinck looks at when it comes to personality is something I was excited to read about and it is where I think the book falters the most as he doesn't really come back to this part and leaves it underdeveloped and focuses more on the worldvision/worldview components.

The proceeding chapters covers the gamut of philosophical revolutions and eras - empiricism, rationalism, mysticism, East/West divide, and atheistic materialism are laid out in depth. In fact, I would say there'd be no way to charge Bavinck with surface-level undertaking of the topics in such a small amount of space.

However, I do think Bavinck gets too caught up in informing his audience of these worldviews that the personality - the bridging between worldvision and worldview is almost lost in the pages. Even in the last chapter where I thought he might tie everything together, while I would have made for a messy display, wasn't done and again it's as if Bavinck only cooked one side of the pancake.

I think this is a worthwhile book to have on the topic of different worldviews, especially from the time period in which Bavinck is writing. I don't think you are given what the title suggests by half but I think this is something presuppositionalists could use as a springboard to talk about how personality forms the bridge between worldvision into a worldview - even if one were to claim to have never formed one before. Final Grade - C-

[Jennifer O. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know two stars makes it seem like the book was miserable -- and it really wasn't. Overall it just felt like a brainstorming session rather than being necessarily linear or going toward a definite point. Although if I were to assign a "point" to the book, it would be to clear a path to his discussion of the Christian worldview, which happens near the very end.

In between 1 and 181, he tackles the idea of how a person's worldview is influenced by their personality (I was never quite sure whether by this term Bavinck meant solely the makeup of a person or their "person-ness," for lack of a better word).

I enjoyed Bavinck's discussions of philosophical worldviews, including empiricism and rationalism. I think he spoke about these at levels that most people could understand the concepts of these "isms" even if they had never read much philosophy. That said, if you're not ready for an examination (however superficial or brief) of these types of subjects, then you may want to pass on this book.

Bavinck seemed to finally hit his stride in chapter 7, "Mysticism and Revelation," in which he examined our historical ideas (such as different ethnic or cultural traditions suggest) about God and our relationship with Him (how it is we actually *know* and relate to Him).

"...the gospel sees the relationship of the human being to God as a lively, a moral relationship. Non-Christian mysticism conceived of that relationship completely differently." (160)

Here Bavinck writes very beautifully about the ideals in the relationship between God and a person who has been changed by Jesus Christ. This page alone was worth reading and made me long for some of the ways in which he described it, which felt lofty:

"The gospel has no words that are great and full enough to explain the infinite fullness of the love of God in Jesus Christ, but it awakens that faith in the heart, that mighty emotion of letting yourself be grasped by the hand of the eternal one." (160)

Finally in chapter 8, "Personality and Worldview,"he attempts to tie everything together and makes some social commentary that's worth reading (the influence of a worldview -- or lack thereof! -- upon our daily individual lives).

I would say I'm not sorry to have spent the time on this. There are thought-provoking pearls here and there, it seems well researched, and I commend Eglinton's editing and translation handiwork. Perhaps it's one of those books that you read just for the purpose of pondering certain ideas in a general way rather than thinking that you've gone from A to Z to a specific destination. If that makes sense. :)

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like rating systems are flawed in so many ways. For the majority of the star ratings I give books on Goodreads, I actually follow their scale. In this case, 3 stars = I liked it. Because with 4 stars meaning "I really liked it," and 5 stars meaning "It was amazing," I didn't feel honest about going higher. The material probably warrants a higher rating, really, but in terms of what I "like," this is where I am.

I read this book together with coworkers, so it was not a personal choice. I enjoyed the read. I enjoy philosophy. I appreciated what was being said in this book. But *personally*, (and I can't stress that word enough), my brain needed simpler language. It's highly likely that the majority of the folks who seek out a book like this have the superior vocabulary and intellect to be unbothered by it. I'm not on that level. Bavinck has some incredible and thought-provoking things to communicate. I just wish it could be communicated in a way that I didn't struggle to process and understand.

In addition to the challenging language, his writing style fooled me more than once. He tends to begin chapters by detailing belief systems in ways that sound almost positive or complimentary, only to end chapters by refuting them. "Let me introduce you to X. X sounds good because of Y. Now let me tell you all the ways that X is actually bad." I can't imagine there's any way this is not entirely intentional, or in fact, the point. But it made it difficult at times for me to follow his points when I couldn't even know for certain whether he was making an argument for or against a belief system until the end of a chapter. Of course, a few chapters in, you start to catch on to this pattern and then you just increase skepticism until the shoe drops. 😅

Interesting mental and spiritual exercise, for sure. This is not my normal fare, but I feel considerably stretched for having partaken.

[Emily Waits (emilylovesreading_) · Rating 4 out of 5]

{Thank you to @crosswaybooks for my gifted copy of this title in exchange for an honest review}

“A person without a worldview is a person without a firm foundation, without a compass, without a vista. He may have a worldvision; he might live, for example, as though there are no norms. But such a worldvision proceeds from himself and is rooted in his nature. He cannot pull himself upward on it, and with it he always remains on the same plane. A person with a worldview, in all cases, has light, sees more widely, more broadly, more deeply.”

I am interested in worldviews, personality, and apologetics, so I knew I would find this title engaging.

I had never much considered how things like personality can impact our worldview before, and I found the author’s concept of “world vision” to be very compelling. This book covers so many things and takes you on a journey through different schools of thoughts throughout time and what a Christian’s point of view on this topic should ultimately be. I think the biggest takeaway for me is the importance of having more than a worldvision. Instead, a deep worldview that is built intentionally, is steeped in God’s Word, and built firmly on the foundation of Scripture so as not to be swayed by worldly and flawed schools of thought which come and pass away in error.

This book was fascinating and very brilliant–so brilliant that I had a hard time keeping up with it at times! If you’re up for a very academic read, I’d definitely recommend this one to you!

[Ryan Handermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not fair to compare J. H. Bavinck with his uncle Herman Bavinck. But that is inevitable for us, especially when Crossway publishes his book in the same format as his Uncle's. While he echoes Bavinck, he just is not the same, so go into this with those assumptions put to the side.

I didn't find this book super helpful, 1) because I found it to be unclear and imprecise at points, and 2) the main point seems to be that all worldviews are colored by individuals. That is a fine point to make, but in our present context is not all that helpful because that is the central and universal understanding in the postmodern age. "True for you," is the mantra. "That's your perspective," attempts to relativize and therefore undermine someone else's perspective. To be clear, Johan is not arguing for this, but rather arguing personality and individuality have a place in our worldview.

[Jessica]

Personality and Worldview is a book by J. H. Bavinck, a Dutch Reformed theologian and
missionary who was the nephew and student of Herman Bavinck. The book creates a distinction between a worldvision (which all people have) and a worldview (which only few have in a mature and wise way). The book explores how our worldvision shapes our personality and how our worldview can help us understand ourselves, others, and God.
This book is a fascinating and insightful exploration of the relationship between personality and worldview. The author draws on his experience as a missionary and a theologian to show how our basic assumptions about reality affect our identity, values, and behavior. He also shows how developing a coherent and biblical worldview can help us grow in wisdom, discernment, and faith. Overall, this is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to understand themselves and others better in light of God’s truth.

[Harley Cottingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bavinck’s assessment on worldview and personality are timeless and even more relevant today. Bavinck breaks the personality down into will(action), feeling (emotion), and intellect (thought). Bavincks then breaks down worldview as our understanding of reality (truth). The reality Bavinck paints is that our worldview and personality are tied together - a wrong worldview can lead to a broken personality when played out, explored further in utilitarianism, mysticism, and Kantian thinking. This broken puzzle piece of who we are then finds its solution in God - which Bavinck paints well. Good read.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Herman Bavinck has become so fashionable in Reformed circles that now they are bringing out marginal works written by his nephew! You could skip reading this and no one would know. It has a few occasional insights about the differences between everyone's implicit worldview and the few's carefully constructed ones, as well as a mildly interesting digression on the Enlightenment. Otherwise I think you could just skip ahead half a century and read Francis Schaeffer.

[Kevin V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important book written long ago but only newly published. J.H. Bavinck, working through a selection of major ideas dominating human thought both in the East and West, ultimately concludes by putting his finger right on the pulse of our modern, relativistic Western culture and exposes the inconsistencies and unfortunate realities of rudderless people in rudderless systems.

Read this slowly. Read it hopefully.

[Guilherme Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great. The erudite mind of J.H Bavinck is astounding. He steel-mans each anti-Christ worldview and life-vision with clarity, charity and then shows how they all are compromising to the human personality (soul). He says much in little.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant study of how we relate to worldviews. His distinction between a worldvision and a worldview is helpful.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very difficult to follow.

[Dayo Adewoye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a profound read on Worldviews.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good but hard.

[Jonathan Fowler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The emergency facing our Western world is its lack of a worldview. It has no life-nourishing and life-directing idea and therefore also no unity in living and thinking. (Ch. 8)

[Bryan Gartland · Rating 3 out of 5]

very confusing for me