Keller’s Formation: James Eglinton on Herman Bavinck

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Collin Hansen
When it comes to theologians that contemporary church leaders should be reading. I don’t know of a more important one than Herman bobbing. That’s what Tim Keller said in his endorsement of James Eglinton, his 2020 book, bobbing a critical biography. Keller first Fred bobbing some 50 years ago in class with Roger Nicole at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, but not much of bobbins voluminous work has been translated until recent years. So we live in a renaissance of appreciation for this Dutch theologian who died in 1921. Probably no one is more responsible for this renaissance then James Eglinton the Meldrum, Senior Lecturer in Reformed theology at the University of Edinburgh. In this special season of gospel bound, we’re exploring in depth several key influences that appear in my book, Timothy Keller his spiritual and intellectual formation. So I’m excited to welcome Eglington who is also a fellow for the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. We’ll talk about Neo Calvinism and whether he disagrees with Bhavik about anything, as well as a beginner’s reading list and his upcoming projects. James, thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

James Eglinton
Thanks, Collin It’s great to join you. Good to be here.

Collin Hansen
All right, big question. Why all the sudden interest in bobbing? Is this all a conspiracy led by you?

James Eglinton
That’s a great question. And no, it’s not all my doing, I can’t really take too much credit for, you know, something that’s fascinating, but Bhavin key died in 1921, as you said, but if you look at something like for example, with Christianity Today, as an important media publication in the 20th century in the English speaking world, and you look back over the last 50 years or so, you find a pretty big name, people who are in the know who cite this mostly untranslated Dutch theologian Herman Bhavin. So I’m thinking about people like Carl F. Henry, Paul S. Reese, came with cancer. So you do have some awareness of him that he’s there, but mostly inaccessible, because his stuff was in Dutch. But the people who could read it made that known that it was great stuff. So there was a knowledge there that filtered through. And there were some works by bank that were available in English works like our reasonable faith, or McNally a day, which is now available under the title of the wonderful works of God. So people did have some access to those works. And those who read it generally really liked it. People like Tim Keller, as a student at Gordon Conwell read our reasonable faith in that phase of his life. And so there was this awareness that this was part of a much bigger, more fascinating picture of untranslated works. And his most important work is reformed metrics for volume work in Christian theology, it’s a really superb work. It’s a modern classic in the Christian tradition. And that came out in English between 2003 and 2008, published by Baker academic, and I think that was the game changer. So I said that I don’t take credit for this, because I didn’t have a handle on that. And I was a seminary student at exactly the right time, when those works were coming out. So I went to seminary in 2004. And just before volume one came out, and then I just started my PhD when the fourth volume came out. So I happened to step onto this wave that I played no part in creating, and I’ve been happily riding the wave ever since.

Collin Hansen
Had you had you spoke? were you speaking Dutch at the time? Or did you pick that up because of your studies and Bavinck?

James Eglinton
Yeah, so I learned Dutch as an adult, I had no knowledge of it at all growing up. But I, when I was in my last year of seminary, I was thinking a lot about a PhD afterwards some thinking about bank because it was reading him and thought this was such great stuff. And I knew that I would have to learn to read Dutch because even with the dogmatics in English, it’s still a translation and there’s still so much work that’s untranslated. So I knew I had to learn to read it. So I spent the last year of my seminary training also learning to read Dutch on the side and then I kept on trying to learn over the three years of my PhD and then after that I went Dutch and moved to the Netherlands for three years it was a postdoc over there was on the faculty and campin which I really loved. So I spent three years just being completely immersed in Dutch life Dutch language church was in Dutch friends well in Dutch read Dutch newspapers, watch Dutch TV, spoke Dutch at work. So came back after three years like that feeling like it was a become some kind of pseudo Dutchman, but yeah, I loved that experience. It was Right.

Collin Hansen
Gotta say the phrase going Dutch means something entirely different dates than it does. In fact, you just described it right there.

James Eglinton
Well, the thing is, I’m Scottish, and we’re equally frugal. So yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t have that connotation here.

Collin Hansen
I appreciate that. Tell us, James, what does it mean to be modern and Orthodox? Basically, what I’m getting at is for you to briefly summarize Neo Calvinism and how you see it in Tim Keller.

James Eglinton
Sure. So I’ll I’ll go for the what is Neo Calvinism part first? Because I think that we’ll set up that answer to the question of what is modern Orthodox? And then how do we get to Tim Keller’s so Neo Calvinism, something that I find myself saying a lot and have done over the years is that it’s not new Calvinism and E W. The NTU is something quite different. So you know, you’ve had your own class, and that’s my fault. Yeah, sorry. That’s your Yeah. That’s okay. We forgive you. But you know, so I work as a scholar of Neo Calvinism in Edinburgh. And every so often, particularly with talking to Americans about my work. People will say things like, Oh, that’s really interesting that someone at Edinboro University works on John MacArthur and John Piper, those guys, and I have to tell him, No, that’s, that’s new. And Benito was a completely different thing. So Neo Calvinism is originally a Dutch movements began in the late 19th century, and then grew the early 20th century, so centered on figures like Abraham Kuyper and Herman bavinck. And it was an attempt to use the historic resources of the Reformed faith to drive the Christian faith forward into the modern age. So the Neo part refers to the fact that it’s that it is new, it’s trying to do something new with a much older tradition. And to do that, in the context of the late modern age should the late 19th century and early 20th century. So I guess, you know, if we’re thinking about that as Neo Calvinism, we could maybe think of like John Calvin and 16th century Geneva as paleo Calvinism. So Calvinism, if we want to call it that, or Reformed Christianity of the 16th century, faced a lot of big questions that were particular to this context. I should Protestants relate to Catholics, if you’re in Calvin’s Geneva, big questions about religious refugees and immigration, big questions around what do you do with people who are explicitly heretical? So a figure like Miguel servita, supers anti Trinitarian, and he was burned at the stake in 16th century Geneva. So there are very big contextual questions that the Reformed faith has to answer. But Neo Calvinism has in a completely different context is in the late 19th century in the Netherlands, is facing big questions around mass democracy, which is a new thing historically, in the Netherlands or Western culture, big questions around industrialization, modern technology, big questions around evolution, the natural sciences. And rather than questions around what do you do with someone who is anti Trinitarian? What do you do with atheists?

How do you live alongside people now who would have been unimaginable in Calvin’s worlds? So the the Neo Calvinists are not just trying to do paleo Calvinism of their own day and age, they’re trying to drive the tradition forward. And sometimes that means challenging things within the tradition. So if you think of Calvin’s support for the state’s execution of an anti Trinitarian, and the view that the state should be busy with the pursuit of heretics, Calvin, Calvin was in that context, but Bhavin can caper that was one thing that they very explicitly revised within their tradition that they didn’t think the state should do this and actually provides their own confession, their church’s confessional documents, to change that. So. So there’s some things that they chant that they challenge and the tradition but lots of other things that they expand because the questions didn’t exist in the Paleo Calvinist era. So that’s what is Neo Calvinism. The modern Orthodox thing of the year is and this is a big thing for Tim, and it comes across very clearly in your book. So a central claim that you hear a lot when you talk about Neo Calvinism or talk to Neo Calvinists is the idea that the Christianity or the Neo Calvinism is both Orthodox and modern. So the Orthodox part means that it is it’s not a kind of revisionist Christianity where, you know, we’ve jettisoned everything that came before the modern age, and we’re just reinventing everything all the time, in order to be modern. So it’s Orthodox, it’s it’s the historic Christian faith, but it’s also a modern, it’s very recognizably not just fourth century Christianity. You’re a 16th century paleo Calvinism. So that’s both of those things. So really, it’s it’s a historical sensibility.

So way of thinking about history. So maybe a way that listeners could think about it is through this question. Do you think that there is the or that there was a historical golden age for the conditions were perfect for what it means to follow Jesus to be a Christian to be part of the church and that he has not passed then are you fighting with tooth and nail to cling on to and sort of live in some kind of a bubble like that? Or do you think that there’s actually never been one single historical period, or cultural context in which the conditions are perfect for being a Christian. And instead, every historical period, every culture that you could live in, will present distinct challenges, that it will be difficult to be a Christian in different ways across different cultures, rather than the idea that there is just some golden age in the past. So Neo Calvinism has a distinct historical sensibility that says that there is no golden age, that it’s certainly more difficult in some cultures to be a Christian than in some others. And a big part of the the impetus historically for Neo Calvinism emerging was the view that in Revolutionary France, with with a very distinct kind of secularism that was being imposed, it was really difficult to be a Christian, they’re more so than in the Netherlands. And that’s and they were trying to fight to not to make it so difficult to be a Christian in the Netherlands.

And that’s a big factor in the backdrop and your Calvinism. But they don’t think that there is a golden age. And then they didn’t think that, that we just need to carry on living as though 16th century Geneva and in fact, if you could be transplanted back there, you’d have to they have to follow Jesus Well, you’d have to ask some really hard questions about a lot of things that were unchallenged or more normal in 16th century Geneva. So the idea is that there is no golden age. And instead, the nature of Orthodoxy is that it’s not bound to or constrained by or encapsulated by or coterminous with any one particular culture of the past. Instead, Christian Orthodoxy is something that puts down roots wherever it lands. And as it does, so, it will affirm things that are good and true and beautiful, whoever finds them in whichever culture, but it will also challenge things that are not good and true and beautiful. And then as the root spread through that site, or wherever it lands, it will rearrange what it finds, and it will make it a better version of what it found. So the Orthodox and modern impulse then says that, if you want to be an Orthodox Christian and be part of the church of the ages, you have to be a part of the church in your age, and not act out to kind of not turn the church into some kind of, you know, historical reenactment museum or something like that. Outside, it’s the 21st century, but you step in and you’re back into the 16th century. And this gets us to Tim Keller, actually, because this is a sensibility that you find reading Neo Calvinists texts, where he, for him this this was something that really chimed with him that desire to be a child of your own age, but also a child of God in that age. And to see that this is what Christians have been doing in every age. And I think that’s the sort of Neo Calvinism provided to them with a lot of the theological under underpinning in order to try to do what he did at Redeemer, for example.

Collin Hansen
You know, what’s interesting there, James? And by the way, that was an amazing answer. Thank you, I gave you an impossible question. And you answered it so amazingly well. The I think what what’s so interesting here, and why it can be confusing to people is that so many of us who know aspects of Neo Calvinism in the United States, know it tied to an ethnic immigrant culture, which does the exact thing that you’re describing, of pristine, kind of a pristine golden era that we want to go back to. So that’s kind of odd that a lot of that Dutch theology that came, as you know, through immigration, suffer some of the very problems that Neil covenant, kneel Calvinism was addressed to try to resolve and deal with their, but Tim Keller did not grow up in that subculture, at all didn’t have any connection to it. But what he did grow up in and came to faith in as a young as a young man, was the Jesus movement, which was exactly that kind of sensibility of being of angelical and having an orthodox belief, a high view of conversion, but a high view of contextualization, as well. And an adaptation to modernity, which, in the American context, was rather new. Yes, there had always been some adaptations, Billy Graham had been an adapter.

Dwight Moody had been an adapter, Billy Sunday had been an adapter. I mean, there’s always been some of that. But still, there was a sensibility that our church traditions should be more static in a lot of ways, but the Jesus movement, I think, kind of up ended that. Probably finally, in the United States, there are some good things and some bad things about that. But that’s one of the things that stood out to me in writing the book was just how much of Tim’s sensibilities had been set by his encounter with a historic theological system that was consistent with script Sure, but in a contemporary context, that was very kind of missionary minded. So I just hadn’t quite thought of that the way that you know, but your answer really helped me with that. Now, one of the other things that’s that I think that Tim appreciate so much of a bank in the rest of us do as well is that he seemed to be able to anticipate. And that’s why one reason he’s so helpful to us today, the post Christian turn that would come to so much of Europe and the broader West in the 20th, and even into the 21st century. And it seems possible that some of his own Neo Calvinist colleagues, maybe perhaps Abraham Kuyper didn’t quite anticipate that change the way that Babic did. Could you explain what what he you know, what he saw? And what makes him so relevant to read today as a result?

James Eglinton
Yeah, sure, I can try. So I think in that context, you know, the late 19th century, early 20th century, there were a lot of people who were trying to make sense of what they saw happening around them, which was the decline of Christianity in Europe, at least. And Europe is way ahead of what was happening in North America. So over the last year or so I read a book by a guy called Oswald Spangler, which really fascinating he was a German, wrote a book that English was called the decline of the West. And it’s this, like, huge macro history theory of civilizations, that they’ll have a 2000 year lifespan, and that they go through a phase of cultural creation, and then establish civilization and then decline, and then they’ll be replaced by something different. And he had this grand theory of this, the pattern of history of civilizations across the world, and for him, then Christianity is coming to the very end of its last phase, and it’s going to die out. And you also have the secularization hypothesis in the background as well, which was quite a common idea and the backdrop to having caper, that the more that Western culture becomes rational and technologized, and secularized, you won’t even have to try and kill up religion, it will just die off, it will wither on the vine, and people will give up on it voluntarily.

And people at that point who believed in the secularization hypothesis, really sincerely believed that if you could fast forward 100 years, you know, given the jewelry and and zoom forward a century, you just you wouldn’t find religion anymore. And you had other backgrounds and the backdrop to the US and Germany, you had David Friedrich Strauss writing that we now live in this new age of the true religion is really science. Now, we should say that we’re no longer Christians, you have all this happening in the background. And I think what’s really interesting with Bhavin, because that, and with caper as well, I think it’s that he could see some of the, the, the useful insights and their critiques. But without the the failure to believe the gospel that flows through all of those things in terms of Spangler, or the secularization hypothesis. So, David Friedrich stress. So what you find with Maverick is that he is very aware of the challenges of the church in the West. And I think, especially in the last couple of decades of battling slife, and the search to speak much more about evangelism and so on. But he’s really aware of all of that. He’s also very aware of the distinct challenge that Nietzsche poses to Western culture and therefore to Christianity. So Nietzsche was a completely novel kind of atheist back and get engaged with other atheists in the 1880s, and 90s.

But they were not very rigorous atheists, you know, they thought we we smooth out the picture of modern life by removing God from it, and then everything else stays the same, and you make more sense of modern life without God. Whereas, you know, the values will still stay the same. And the kind of world we want to live in stays the same quest for having he thought Nietzsche was correct. If we remove garden, and particularly Jesus, at the center of how we think about the world, then everything has to be revalued. And we have no idea what will come after. And I think what’s so insightful about bibingka, the way that he approaches this, is that he basically set up his expectation of the 20th century, not as the secularization hypothesis and religion will just die out. He also didn’t think that we would all just become Nietzsche once across the 20th century. But he thought that the 20th century would be a really colossal struggle within the Western soul between Christ and Nietzsche. And the Western people having been formed for century after century by Christianity and suddenly having this big jewel of Nisa that Nietzsche had revealed what what was there, unconsciously in many Western hearts, you know, all of a sudden, there’s this Joseph Nietzsche in Western culture as well. And he really tugs at things that are so normal to Western people.

So I think, for example, to take this from the present day, if I think of Western Europe have a context like my own in Scotland. Over the last couple of years in the COVID pandemic, we have been willing to take a huge hit socially, economically, to preserve the health of our extreme elderly population, as those who are most at risk is willing to sacrifice a tremendous amount for them that has no, you know, we’ve moved on from that and society has opened up and you know, life kind of feels like it’s back to normal. But the first thing that a lot of politicians in Scotland are trying to do now that life is getting back to normal is to bring in assisted suicide. And that is primarily focused on the same people that we’ve just given up so much, in a very Christ, like we actually as a society, that’s Christ actually farming our moral formation, to to love the elderly. But if you read Nietzsche read his Twilight of the idols, he has nothing that’s very good to say about the people who are really elderly. So then that’s Nietzsche talking about another part of our imagination, and the fact that these two things go side by side, and society, and that we’re really kind of torn between the two. I think it’s a really striking example of the kind of future that Bhavik foresaw so bad things really useful, because he doesn’t have a simplistic, you know, we’ve just got back to the ancient Roman world, and we’re being thrown to the lions. But he also doesn’t think everything’s fine.

You know, we’re still we still live in this very free Christian society. Instead, he said that it’s a very mixed society. And you asked the point about caper there as well, which I think it’s an interesting question, because I used to find Bhavin, a lot more insightful than Keifer on this, but I think at that point, I probably read too much, early typer. And not enough late. That’s so so and the last 15 years of Cuypers life, which are the last 15 years after he was Prime Minister of the Netherlands, again, for listeners who don’t know that, so he was Prime Minister between 1901 and 1904. And a lot of people at that point, you know, thought it’s great. We have this Neo Calvinist Prime Minister, and, you know, this is everything’s going really well for for Christianity in the Netherlands. But then he only lasted one term and office and then after that caper, himself realized that the church is really facing, you know, sailing into troubled waters culturally.

And I think he caught up with a lot of the stuff that Bhavin could have already seen. And then if you read capers, writings in the last 15 years of his life, I think that he is actually remarkably insightful cultural critique and commentator, and provides really amazing missiological resources for helping the church and in that mixed culture to think through, you know, how do you reach people who are like third generation on church to me, he saw that happening in the Netherlands in his in his own lifetime. And that’s something that I think happens in Scotland, you know, maybe in the 1970s or 80s. So way after Cuypers time, and he’s that he’s actively thinking through these issues. So I think I’m, I’m much more sympathetic to the lake paper actually is maybe more of a resource than we’ve given him credit for. So the key work there is pro reggae volume one published in that the big lexham series of works by Piper and it’s public theology, and it’s fascinating,

Collin Hansen
when you’re one of the reasons that well, Kiper is well known, especially among Americans is because of his lectures at Princeton. A lot of people don’t know the connections of bank to the United States. He was pretty adamant that Calvinism would never flourish in the United States. I’m wondering, do you agree with them? Or would Tim Keller and the example of others disprove his prophecy?

James Eglinton
Yeah, well, I guess it’s fascinating because Kiper really saw Calvinism and America as like as made for one another. The reason for that is that when Kuyper is talking in that in that way, when he’s thinking about Calvinism, he’s thinking about a very intentional way to pursue the Christian faith in every area of life. So Calvinism is the pursuit of the reformation of everything that you’re doing. So you know, if you’re running a business, if you’re making a sculpture, if you’re cooking dinner, whatever you’re doing that you want to do that core on, do you want to do it before the face of God for God’s glory. And that’s a really intentional way to be, especially for hyper in Neo Calvinism, because of the Neo part that’s happening in the modern age that’s trying to remove Christianity from each part of life. So to do that, intentionally is a very deliberate thing, and a very modern thing. And American culture for caper. At that point, you know, it’s a century younger than it is now, even and for European, it’s still quite young. But it’s this culture that’s busy with its own self creation. It’s trying to invent, intentionally, how to how to exist and how to function in every sphere of its existence. So he thought that those two things were a really perfect combination, and that if Americans could just hear about Calvinism, then Calvinism would, would make America great, not again, but just make it great for the first time.

Collin Hansen
For the first time.

James Eglinton
But Bavick didn’t think he was really pessimistic about Calvinism and Neo Calvinism in North America. And his reason for that was that when Bhavin is talking about Calvinism, there is not so much thinking about you know, living intentionally for the glory of God in every area of your life, what he’s thinking about as much more a Calvinist way of understanding salvation, that you contribute nothing or what you contribute is just all the reasons that you have failed God than that you’re rebel against them, and you can’t pull up your bootstraps. So none of those very intuitively American ways of thinking, transfer over. And in fact, they’re kind of impediments to what Calvinism has to say that instead of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that you trust them a salvation that you do not contribute to you don’t earn you receive by grace alone. And then in gratitude, you respond, he thought that was a very unAmerican way to, to think in the first place. And he just didn’t think that American culture would predominantly be receptive to it. So he thought that America would be I mean, he would call it a Methodist land bow, I guess, you know, again, 100 years on, you might think more in terms of it’s more of an Arminian kind of country where it’s more receptive to that way of trying to understand salvation. But in terms of the study, and you asked again, about Tim, yeah. So I find so this is really interesting, because, Tim, when I’m talking to him about Neo Calvinism and America, you know, he really thinks that, that American Christianity really needs a good dose of new Calvinism, that it provides a lot of great resources that will help the church in North America. But my impression from Tim is that maybe he’s, he thinks that American culture is also not tremendously receptive to it, but maybe for different reasons to Bavick.

So for Bavick, it’s not receptive because of American culture of being a pull yourself up by your bootstraps culture, and that is just a bit awkward for a Calvinist way of presenting the gospel. But for Tim, I think the impediment is more focused on how politically divided America is. That it’s this country that is organized around a binary political divide. And that creates a very kind of tribal, you know, there are two ways to be and you have to fit within one of the two. And Tim’s very well known as, you know, Third Way thinker. And that’s also, I think, very closely related to Neo Calvinism, which has a distinct way of approaching again, as part of the Orthodox and modern sensibility actually, that there’s no one culture that is ever completely coterminous with Christianity. And there’s no golden age, there’s no golden subculture, there’s no golden political movement. So for Tim, I think that the the challenge for Neo Calvinism and the thing that makes a lot of Americans just kind of blind and deaf to what Neo Calvinism tries to get across is that that, that it gets filtered through a binary, I became quite tribal lens and Neo Calvinism defies that from the very beginning, actually.

Collin Hansen
Well, I am really having to restrain myself here, because I’ve got thoughts about the 19th century, the Methodist character, the Baptist character of the United States, how that played out in the 20th century, the decline of the Methodist church, but the takeover of American culture by Methodist impulses, basically secularized Methodism and then also perspective on new Calvinism. And the role of 911, in kind of turning the United States toward a much darker perspective, which seems to be more consistent with a Calvinistic explanation of the world. So I’m going to hold back, we’ll have to do another conversation with a Keller center Symposium on that topic. A lot of people don’t realize your your connections to Tim going back personally, a number of years, or, or your connection to the infamous Kiper prize incident in 2017, which is a key part of my book on Tim. We know of course, that Tim did not receive that prize that was rescinded that we delivered the talk. And that is his most extensive engagement, at least that I found with Leslie Nijmegen, and a missional agenda for the 21st century. Good thoughts do you have looking back on that whole? That whole incident in 2017?

James Eglinton
Yeah. So Well, I first met him in 2008. So we went back a good bit before then. And I first met him at a church planting conference in London that I went down to, and, you know, I had listened to a bit of his preaching by that point. And I was really impressed with his talks. I thought they were great. And so I went over to shake his hand afterwards and just say thanks, and build them a name and teach said, Don’t you have a blog? Which I was, I was quaking in my shoes, because I was one of those, you know, nerdy seminary students who had a blog back in 2008. And there was mortified that Tim Keller had read my blog, or even though he knew who I was, but he paid attention and remembered.

Collin Hansen
It’s safe to assume Tim has read everything.

James Eglinton
But he was from then on, he’s just been a consistent, relentless encourager towards me and my work as a European Scottish Christian pastor in training at that point theologian afterwards. And so he’s he’s just been really selfless encourager in the background, which is part of what I appreciate so much about him, but the copper, the copper price incident or Princeton’s Okay, so I was. So at that point, there was the the caper center, Princeton, which I had attended for many years as a PhD student, and then as a faculty member after that, and I had joined the advisory boards for that center the year before we give the prize to Tim. So they wanted to bring on some European scholars of Neo Calvinism. So George hiring from the University of Amsterdam and Canton, also, and I joined together at the same time. And the first nominee that we proposed was Tim Keller, because it’s the prize for excellence and reformed theology and public life. So but then, people want to read the history of how that played out, they can they can, they can read your book, I guess, because very well. But I suppose my abiding memories of the work. On the one hand, I mean, Tim’s lecture on Leslie newbiggin, and the Michigan concert was just stunning, it was it was completely outstanding. So in that regard, it was memorable, and a wonderful way, and, but also the strangeness of the actual event, because he came in to give the lecture. And, and it was wonderful.

But the lecture was held in an underground lecture hall, for security reasons, many reasons, right. And they were, you know, they were checking people at the door for security. And the whole atmosphere was was so completely bizarre. And I think, especially for a European, because a couple of years before the price have gone to Jonathan Sacks, who was the chief rabbi of the Commonwealth. And, and from a British perspective, he was fairly conservative in the Jewish community on issues around for example, gender, and sexuality. And in his lifetime, got quite a lot of flack from more, I guess, liberal Jews, because of his views on those things. And also, it was not a Christian either was a Jew. And he gave him I gave a fantastic lecture. And it was, it was a privilege to meet him. And so he’s someone whose writings I really valued and loved. And it was just, it was an honor to meet him. But you know, there were no protests for similar kinds of issues, and Jonathan Sacks, but then for Tim Keller’s underground with security on the door because of security risks. And, again, for a European, it was just so weird culturally, I mean, I still don’t really have words to describe, but other than bizarre, felt extremely foreign. That because of different ideas around ordination, for example, or Presbyterian denomination you’re in, but you might not be safe attending a lecture at Princeton, it was just it was bizarre. But it was fascinating to be there as part of the history. And it was a wonderful lecture. But I think I mean, Tim came out of Connecticut with a lot of credit for coming and giving a very, you know, a superb lecture, but delivering a very graciously not really making an issue of the weirdness. But I was very struck by the weirdness.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, that is that lecture is very much worth listening to and reading and I give extensive engagement with it, because I think it is one of the landmark messages of Tim’s life, and one that gives us a lot to really continue to interact with going forward. 2017 was around the kind of peaking of the worst of campus life, terms of cancellation and protests and a lot of the stuff that Jonathan hight and Greg Lukianoff wrote about in their book, coddling of the American mind, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about the Methodist Baptist dynamic. As you know, the United States is just so big and so varied, that it’s very difficult to understand, because you can’t tell if the place is incredibly reactionary, and conservative, or if it’s incredibly progressive, and even puritanical. And then you have these cross currents working in different ways where we’re Baptists are both traditional, but also very liberal, in terms are progressive in terms of their views of history and views of, of kind of technology, for example, and a Methodist might be very libertarian in terms of ethics, on sex, but then extremely aggressive on ethics when it comes to the environment or on on trans ideology. So it’s very confusing. And I can only I can only imagine. Just a couple quick questions to wrap up. I had all these aspirations of keeping this interview short, and then I actually want to make it way longer, but we’re gonna have to keep those James for another day. So do you disagree with me having on anything?

James Eglinton
Oh, yeah, I do. But so listeners will be happy to know. But, you know, the way that I that I tried to learn from him at the beginning and learn to read him was to apprentice myself to them. Yeah. As a theologian, and that was that was what really drew me to do the long deep dive in the PhD. And I was very intentional. that point about not wanting to rush in, you know, 25 year old me who knew nothing to try to find? Well, this is what I disagree on. And this is why he’s right. Who am I to judge, at least at that stage, even now, maybe. But what I wanted to do at the beginning was to just listen, and try and try to earn the right to become a conversation partner in the first place. And to do that I wanted to spend a few years reading him as thoughtfully as I could, just to try and see how does he join the dots, because the thing that makes a lot of these great thinkers great is that they’re, they’re really creative intellectually. And they can make connections that take you by surprise. And they can, you know, if you come in with a very rigid grid that you’ve learned by the age of 25, and you’re going to judge everyone, by consistently, they fit that grid, you will be pretty miserable in a PhD, I think, Graham, I won’t go on to accomplish very much. So I wanted just to try and earn the right to have to converse with him by trying to understand him well enough. Because if you don’t understand someone, your critique doesn’t really count for very much, I think, and I try and instill that in my own students as well. So I wasn’t really concerned too much with agreement or disagreement.

Initially, I wanted to try and become a conversation partner and having done so I guess, the conversation that I have with him, and he’s wonderful, he’s my theological, life’s main conversation partner, I think, is that I become very aware that he’s a child of his time, and I’m a child of mine. And there’s so much rather than kind of simple disagreement or agreement, there’s so much about the world that he was thinking, and that’s just not the world I live in. So he was very much a part of the Dutch colonial projects, a big supporter of that, that’s, that’s such a foreign world to me that when I read that I just can’t can’t really get on board. And it’s so foreign to me. And that’s a really big thing for him in the in a lot of his life. So, of course, there are points of disagreement, but the way that I try and understand those, it’s really through him as my most valued, trusted conversation partner. But as well as that the way that that through that conversation. It’s helped me understand what he was that he disagreed with himself, that there’s development in his thoughts that when he knows that he’s dying, after his heart attack, he then starts to curate the parts of his written legacy that he thinks really need to be read by Christians in the coming generations. And there are things that he doesn’t think there’s our top priority. And there’s a lot that he leaves open ended in his work as well that he thinks will need to be developed and challenged and changed. So the simple disagreement and agreement is not really what I’ve tried to aim for, but instead, I think, you know, through that conversation, it’s like he’s, you know, he’s looking for people who will come after who will take the baton and keep on running, who will challenge some of his thinking, you will tidy up loose ends, who will correct things, who will, who will push on the things that he left unfinished. So I see myself more than that kind of a role as a reader of having in the fashion of napping.

Collin Hansen
Wow, that that reminds me a lot, James, have the answer to the question that I got. When I first started seminary with Doug Sweeney, one of my favorite scholars, professors, and of course, an expert on Jonathan Edwards. And a lot of this, I think, I think Bob and Ken Edwards have a lot in common. I think they both fit that otter, that modern Orthodox paradigm in there. I mean, we could go on and on about that. But I would say also, the rediscoveries of Edwards, have a lot in common with the current rediscovery of bank, or discovery for a lot of Americans and other English speakers who just weren’t able to access him in the past. But as Doug Sweeney, that question as a first year seminary student in 2007, and he said, Oh, gosh, no, I disagree on all kinds of things with him. And I really don’t I mean, he’s a Lutheran and has a lot of other views as well. What I always respected about Doug, and still respect, is how well he honors him as a scholar and as a Christian, in teaching him so that we can understand him, like you said, as a conversation partner before we can begin to develop the levels of insight that allow us as a conversation partner to disagree with him, and I love that approach to theology as well as to the history and put it together historical theology. Okay, last question, James, a quick one here. Where does a reader of bank begin who’s just listening, learning about this for the first time, maybe take us through the first three works that we might want to tackle?

James Eglinton
Well, I guess, you know, new reader is just a blank slate. And Bhavish was very aware of that, too. So he wrote works at a bunch of different levels for different kinds of reader. I think, you know, if the reader in question here is, you know, a church member or you know, interested layperson. I think outstanding work is the wonderful works of God. So one volume work, and it’s a distillation of his dogmatics. And it’s really beautifully clear, Starley dachser logical, you know, so you read it and each chapter just seeing this, you know, ends with a worshipful conclusion. So it’s before was this devotional reading. And he and it looks like it’s a very thick book, you know, it looks like a massive tome. But actually all of the chapters are really short and you can read them all and pretty quick time. So the the length of it is a bit deceptive given that the parts are all quite short so and Babic wrote that for people who, who didn’t have a theology degree, but he did assume that you’d like to read books, and that you’ve got the the desire to sit down and work through something that will take you a while to go through all the chapters.

So that’s a really amazing book. And there’s a beautiful edition of it by Westminster seminary press, I’d recommend that I think if you’re if you are a pastor, or if you are a theology students here at seminary, it’s really worth investing in his dogmatics, four volume work published by Baker academic, it’s not the kind of thing that’s designed for you just to sit down and read it from cover to cover in a single sitting, that’s more designed to be a reference work that you will always go back to, it’s one of the things that you should always be pulling off yourself when you’re trying to think through, you know, how do you understand the really big theological ideas dogmas in the Christian tradition? And how do you articulate them clearly, you know, how do you get from the exegesis of Scripture to the doctrine of the Trinity, or the two natures of Christ or the sacraments or something like that. So that’s a really outstanding reference to work there that Bhavin felt himself that you probably need some prior training to get the most out of that. But I think if you have that training, you should really go for it and invest the time and invest the space in your bookshelf, the space in your bank balance as well and other metrics that can do a shameless plug as well, just because I’m personally in Iceland, trying to help people understand Vivek. I think that trying to make sense of the theology is always helped a lot by having a sense of who the person was, who produced it. So I think biographies of theologians in general, if they’re done well are really helpful things in order to go on then you’re and read the works fruitfully and get them in their context. And that helps you bridge the gap between this book from 1904 and your life in 2022. So, so, so read a read up, I think biography there’s one that I could suggest to you

Collin Hansen
Came out in 2020. I’ll do the plug for you. James Eglington Bavinck, a critical biography with Baker, highly recommended, in fact, I give the same advice if you’re going to jump into Luther, start with start with Oberman or, or Baynton. I say if you’re going to start with Edwards, start with Marston. Get a sense for the overall perspective, the life and the times the situatedness of that person. And I think your your critical biography of Maverick is very similar to Morrison’s on Edwards. And so both of them make for a very interesting read. So, my guest here on gospel bound has been James Eglinton.

You can see why. He brought a lot of insight into my and really encouraging feedback in my own work on Timothy Keller his spiritual and intellectual formation and eager to see his ongoing work in the future through the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, and elsewhere. James, thanks for your time.

James Eglinton
Thank you for having me.