Bavinck and the Nations: A Response to N. Gray Sutanto
1 October 2024
By Dr Adi Schlebusch
A friend recently drew my attention to this article published by N. Gray Sutanto in Christianity Today. Sutanto is the assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Washington DC. As he has been involved in a number of research and translation projects relating to Neo-Calvinism, he has the necessary credentials to write about it. This of course renders his article entitled "Bavinck Warned that Without Christianity, Racism and Nationalism Thrive" all the more disappointing.
The article starts off well. Sutanto rightly points out how Bavinck believed in human (bio)diversity as a God-given reality through which God is glorified and that the unity that transcends distinctions ought to be sought in Christ alone as opposed to ethno-cultural amalgamation. He even refers to Richard Mouw’s astute observation that for Bavinck the image of God organically unfolds in the rich cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity of mankind.
However, he then claims that Bavinck “coupled this positive vision with harsh warnings against racism and nationalism.” He references two of Bavinck’s works in this regard, but fails to provide any substantial quotes. The bulk of his references come from Bavinck’s Philosophy of Revelation in which he polemicized against an evolutionary Aryan imperialism and in particular the practice of eugenics. But Sutanto fails to place Bavinck’s statements in its proper context. In Philosophy of Revelation, Bavinck expressly notes that
The cosmopolitanism of the “Enlightenment" was not only exchanged in the nineteenth century for patriotism, but this patriotism was not infrequently developed into an exaggerated, dangerous, and belligerent chauvinism, which exalts its own people at the cost of other nations. In its turn this chauvinism was fed and strengthened by the revival of the race-consciousness which in Gobineau and H.St. Chamberlain found its scientific defenders. Not only in the different parts of the earth, but also often among the same people, and in the same land, races are sharply opposed to each other, striving after the chief power in the state, and supremacy in the kingdom of the mind. This race-glorification acquires such a serious character, and so far exceeds all bounds, that the virtues of the race are identified with the highest ideal. Deutschtum, for example, is placed on a level with Christendom, and Jesus is considered as an Aryan in race.1
Bavinck clearly here argues against identifying racial virtues with “the highest ideal” as an exaggerated reaction against the multiculturalism and internationalism of the Enlightenment. He also doesn’t condemn nationalism per se, but specifically “belligerent chauvinism,” i.e. an exaggerated nationalism not maintained within its proper bounds so that it becomes essentially imperialistic. That Bavinck’s claims cited by Stutanto in his article does not entail a rejection of European ethno-nationalism, is also evident from Bavinck’s Christian Philosophy of Science, in which he writes:
There also exists no guarantee that the culture in which we pride ourselves will not one day be taken away from us. That of Babylon and Assyria, Greece and Rome declined despite all of the heights it had achieved. Who can predict the future of our civilization? Who does not tremble at the thought of the red, black or yellow threat?2
Here Bavinck highlights the danger that the demographic replacement of native white populations of Western nations by other races poses in terms of destroying Western culture. It is evident that he was no supporter of mass immigration or propositional nationhood. He also here evidently identifies himself with a particular stock and civilization which he sees as intrinsically bound to that stock.
Stutanto actully implicitly acknowledges the error of his interpretation when he quotes Bavinck as affirming ethnoracial distinctions as real. Indeed, in the same work quoted by Sutanto, The Philosophy of Revelation, Bavinck expressely refers to the existence of “races and national families”3 as the manifestation of divine providence. To his credit, towards the end of his article Sutanto indeed admits that “affirming Christianity means rejecting humanly fabricated uniformity and embracing divinely ordained diversity.” This is exactly what Bavinck taught and it is also exactly what Christian ethno-nationalism entails.
Ultimately, Sutanto’s entire piece is self-contradictory and illogical, as he quite literally affirms that Bavinck is saying the opposite of what he claims Bavinck is saying. The fact that Bavinck rejected eugenics and Pan-German imperialism simply does not mean he rejected Christian Nationalism. In fact, his own writings prove the exact opposite. As I have shown, it is evident from the primary sources that ethno-racial distinctions as creational ordinance played an important role in Bavinck’s social ontology.
1. p. 261. Hetzelfde verschijnsel nemen wij ook internationaal, in de verhouding der volken, waar. Het kosmopolitisme der „Aufklärung" maakte niet alleen in de negentiende eeuw voor het patriotisme plaats, maar het patriotisme ontwikkelde zich niet zelden tot een overspannen, gevaarlijk, krijgslustig chauvinisme, dat het eigen volk ten koste van andere volken verheft en verheerlijkt. Op zijne beurt werd dit chauvinisme weer gevoed en versterkt door de ontwaking van het rasbewustzijn, dat in Gobineau en H.St. Chamberlain zijne wetenschappelijke verdedigers vond. Niet alleen in de verschillende deelen der aarde, maar ook dikwerf onder dezelfde volken en in dezelfde landen staan de rassen scherp geteekend tegenover elkaar, dingende naar de oppermacht in den staat en naar de suprematie in het rijk van den geest. Zoozeer neemt deze rasverheerlijking een ernstig karakter aan en gaat zij alle grenzen te buiten, dat de deugden van het ras met het hoogste ideaal worden vereenzelvigd, Deutschtum bijv. met Christentum gelijk gesteld, en Jezus tot een Ariër genaturaliseerd wordt.
2. p. 97. Er bestaat ook volstrekt geen waarborg, dat de cultuur, op welke wij ons beroemen, ons nimmer ontnomen zal worden. Die van Babylon en Assur, die van Griekenland en Rome is, in weerwil van haar hoogsten bloei, te gronde gegaan; wire zal de toekomst voorspellen van de beschaving, die thans nog ons deel is? En wie huivert soms niet bij de gedachte aan het roode, het zwarte, en het gele gevaar?
3. p. 100. de rassen en volkstypen.