A Cathartic Reading of Herman Bavinck and an Invitation to Overcome the Plausibility Crisis of Christianity
Willem J. de Wit
Post-Christian Amsterdam is a place where life seems to be good without God, where Jesus is seen as a figure of a distant past, and where only a few people still go to church. However, it is also a context from which a deeply reflected invitation springs to face and overcome the plausibility crisis of Christianity. By telling the story of the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) and his struggle to remain standing as a Christian over against the modern worldview of his day, this study offers interested readers all over the world a mirror in which to face their own struggle. Moreover, in a world explained without God and marked by evil, it extends the invitation to adopt a binocular worldview and to live with open eyes on the way to the living God, even if this implies dying with Christ.