Herman and Johan Herman Bavinck on the Uniqueness of Christian Theism

Abstract This article presents Herman Bavinck and Johan Herman Bavinck’s explications of the uniqueness of Christian theism in terms of the absolute personalism of the Christian Scriptures. Both argue that, outside of Christian special revelation, absoluteness and personality appear in irresolvable dialectic. The dogmatician Herman Bavinck detects this tension in the history of Western philosophy, and the missiologist Johan Herman in the religions of Java. They argue that the Christian Scriptures present the absolute personality of the triune God as the subversive fulfillment of the contradictory theisms of philosophical speculation and of non-Christian religions respectively. This article thus attempts a retrieval of a promising neo-Calvinist theme for the sake of a Reformed theology of religions and missiological encounter.