Alright to distract myself from dad's surgery, I actually finished @DrJamesEglinton's tremendous bio of Bavinck over the weekend. A few quick thoughts off the top of my head:

1. As a reader of Bavinck, it's always nice to put flesh on someone who seems to be just a titan of pure thought. His writing is very rich, human, and real as dogmatics goes, but it's encouraging to read about the very human realities that shaped him as a thinker.

2. The biography is so helpful in setting the ideological, social, and material conditions for Bavinck's work to unfold. It's not a grossly over-detailed dive, but it's a rich description that makes his accomplishment stand out.

2a. It also gives more shape to the logic behind why it has the contours it does. The Bavinck who is Orthodox and Modern, a Seceder and a Notable Figure thrust to the heart of Dutch culture, politics, and church life.

3. One thing that stood out to me was just how much Bavinck there is left to read (and to translate!). The man was a polymath writing works of psychology, education, raising children, raising teenagers (yes, a whole book on teenagers), as well as special ethical treatises.

4. You also get a sense of the way Bavinck managed to be both a thinker who was always in process, while at the same time grounded in his bedrock, dogmatic and confessional foundations. Bavinck's God was unchanging, but Bavinck himself was not. Not wavering, but not static.

5. As a young pastor it was particularly interesting to read about the way he engaged ecclesial and theological conflict, his unique blend of irenicism, iconoclasm, and the distinctions between his leadership and that of Kuyper--both its strengths and weaknesses.

5a. Bavinck's ability as a synthetic, Aristotelian, nuancer was an excellent balance, counter-point, or refinement on Kuyper's dynamic, driving, antithetical leadership. It's just worth thinking through who you are in any organization, church, or movement you're a part of.

6. I could keep going, but it was such a helpful read in so many ways. For me, I came away more impressed, not less by the man and his work, even if I came away with a greater sense of his humanity, fallibility, and need for the same grace of God to which his dogmatics testify.