God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology with N Gray Sutanto (Bloomsbury, 2024)

October 14, 2026

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5 min read

In the early 1900s, decades before the Nazi Holocaust, the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck was already warning that when a society abandons belief in God, it does not stop having religious impulses—it simply transfers them onto something else. The most natural substitute, he argued, is humanity itself. And because “humanity” is too abstract to enforce, it quickly narrows to a particular people group: the German nation, the European race, the culture that will decide what is right and wrong and which other cultures are barbaric and must be overcome. This diagnosis, recovered and developed by N. Gray Sutanto in God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology, is one of the most striking features of a book that aims to show why Bavinck’s holistic vision of the human person matters for contemporary theology and for pressing cultural questions around race, nationalism, and the nature of belief itself.

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What you'll learn

1 (04:42) **Why Bavinck’s Anthropology Matters Today** - The guest introduces the book’s two core arguments for a holistic anthropology: the soul-body relation and corporate humanity.
2 (07:21) **The Fivefold Definition of the Image of God** - A detailed breakdown of Bavinck’s comprehensive definition of the *imago Dei* from the *Reformed Dogmatics*.
3 (12:16) **Bringing Bavinck into Conversation with Affect Theory** - How Bavinck’s anthropology aligns with contemporary affect theory and Heidegger’s phenomenology to challenge an overly rational view of human nature.
4 (19:16) **Bavinck and the Cognitive Science of Religion** - How a Reformed perspective interprets the empirical data that humans are naturally predisposed to believe in God.
5 (22:51) **Bavinck’s Prophetic Critique of Racism and Nationalism** - How Bavinck diagnosed the emerging European and American racism of the early 20th century as a direct consequence of the decline of Christian belief.
6 (26:05) **The Christian Alternative: Unity and Organic Diversity** - Bavinck’s positive theological vision for a Christian alternative to racism, rooted in the unity of the human race and the creational intent for cultural diversity.
7 (30:40) **The Beatific Vision: Christological, Not Naturalistic** - How Bavinck’s understanding of the final hope of communion with God is centered on the incarnate Jesus Christ, not an abstract contemplation of the divine essence.

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Show Notes

God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology (Bloomsbury, 2024)is the first book to apply Bavinck's theological anthropology to contemporary theological issues. Sutanto provides a sustained close reading of Herman Bavinck's contributions to theological anthropology and positions him in conversation with current and historical dialogues on embodiment, revelation, affect theory, phenomenology, the cognitive science of religion, ethics, race, covenant, and the beatific vision. Dr. Gray Sutanto explores the holistic character of Bavinck's vision of humanity, suggesting ways in which his theological anthropology cuts across several potential binaries in contemporary discourse, between affect and reason, body and soul, animality and religiosity, unity and diversity, and between a this-worldly or other-worldly eschatology.

Dr. Sutanto serves as the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. and an associate editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology. He has received visiting fellowships at the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and is on the steering committee for the Reformed Theology and History Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Along with the theologian Herman Bavinck, Dr. Sutanto’s research interests are broad, ranging from modern Protestant theology, prolegomena, humanity and sin, the relationship between philosophy and theology, analytic theology, and Christianity and culture.

For previous NBN conversations on similar topics, see these interviews on Herman Bavinck's Christology and academic addresses or an introduction on Neo-Calvinism or the T&T Clark handbook on the global movement. In this conversation Sutanto mentioned this article he wrote on Bavinck and Christian nationalism.

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