Bavinck Helps Solve the Riddle of Life
One of the most dangerous myths for those seeking to have a mind anchored in reality is that “up-to-date” or “new” are adjectives that indicate value rather than simply descriptions of the point in time something has arrived.
C. S. Lewis famously describes this perspective as chronological snobbery.
Of course, chronological snobbery can run the other direction, too, with people assuming a greater value for those things that are old.
That debate aside, I have recently found significant value in an old book. In this case, the striking quality of the book depends on its age, because while it dates to the 1940s, the questions it answers are the same ones that are being asked today. As a result, it sidesteps many of the petty debates of our day and provides a cleaner, more direct response to honest questions than many contemporary volumes.
J. H. Bavinck is the somewhat lesser-known nephew of Heman Bavinck. He was a missionary to Indonesia who later became a missiology professor. In many ways he follows after Herman’s theology, but he applies it in different directions.
In The Riddle of Life, the younger Bavinck explores basic questions about the nature of Christianity. The back cover blurb appropriately notes that this book is “in the spirit of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.” While it is, perhaps, less quotable in the English, it is no less profound.
Internal Focus
As a Lewis fan, I am and will likely remain partial to Mere Christianity. Taken as a whole, those radio talks, later converted to the well-loved book, present a Christianity that is both ancient and modern. To get the whole picture, however, you have to take in the whole book.
The Riddle of Life has eighteen short chapters in it. Each picks up distinct questions. Bavinck discussed epistemology, the nature of faith, the origin of the universe, what it means to be human, the meaning of life, idols, Christ as redeemer. The book is both an apologetic work and a basic introduction to Christianity. Each chapter concludes by showing how Christianity best answers the questions that the world has to offer.
Bavinck’s audience was different. Lewis was broadcasting over the air waves to anyone who listened—from the regular church attender to the person who had escaped the influence of both the dissenters and the state-sanctioned church. The Riddle of Life is the sort of book that will most likely be pressed into the hands of a reader (perhaps a young one) within the local church that is asking hard questions.
Both approaches are valuable, but I would strongly consider using The Riddle of Life as a discipleship tool for youth as they grow up in the local church, examining their presuppositions and weighing the faith of their childhood.
Bypassing Hot-Button Debates
One of the beauties of Bavinck’s The Riddle of Life is that it addresses the deep, meaningful questions of the Christian life while sidestepping the contemporary defeater beliefs. Christians need to be able to explain the why of our sexual ethics. However, the Christian faith is a great deal more than a sexual ethic.
Bavinck deals with the idol of pleasure, but because his book was written prior to the ravages of the sexual revolution, he doesn’t wrestle with free love or homosexuality in the same way a contemporary writer does. And, since he was writing chronologically prior to those challenges, he gets to focus on the core of Christianity without being accused of sidestepping important issues.
Using The Riddle of Life as a resource for discipleship, therefore, is a way to get a solid explanation of core Christian answers to persistent questions that young Christians often ask without getting bogged down in endless debates over cultural defeater beliefs. The point of many of the defeater beliefs often seems to be to prevent examining the underlying Christian beliefs, so this is helpful.
Persistent Human Condition
Another strength of older approaches to Christian apologetics is that it demonstrates to readers (and teachers within the church) that contemporary skepticism and YouTube rants do not offer new challenges to the Christian faith. For at least 100 years (and longer, if you read enough older sources) people have been challenging Christianity in the same basic ways.
This means that we do not need to invent some new version of Christianity to answer modern challenges. Instead, we need to read more deeply in our own tradition to recover the answers to the persistent questions that underly the human condition.
Every generation has to wrestle with their mortality. Bavinck notes, “every human carries in his or her soul an intuitive longing for eternity. In the mist of the currents of life’s happenings we sense something of the eternal.” (91) These are the same questions that have been asked from the earliest days. Why reinvent alternative answers?
Commendation
I commend Bavinck’s The Riddle of Life as part of a homeschool curriculum, a youth discipleship study, or as a resource to study with a new believer. It would also be a good resource to study with someone who is considering Christianity for the first time.
In some cases, this book may answer questions that have been at the forefront of someone’s mind. In other cases, this volume may surface questions that have not yet arisen. In any case, the responses to the questions are thoroughly orthodox and deeply rooted within the Christian tradition.
For those seeking a new tool in their arsenal to encourage young believers to stay and others to come to faith, The Riddle of Life provides another solid option.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.