Herman Bavinck and Christian (Idealist) Historiography

In the face of materialist monism and the positivist epistemology that often accompanied it, the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) advocated the recovery of a Christian idealism. But what did this mean in practice? On the domain of history, Bavinck speaks of divine revelation supplying the idea that makes world-history possible. Bavinck, nevertheless, left no worked examples that show how a Christian-idealist historiography might proceed. Some of his later writings, however, offer clues. Drawing attention to prominent themes in the history of ideas presented in The Foremost Problems of Contemporary Dogmatics and in the lecture “Nature and History in the Light of Christ”, this paper offers a sketch of what a Bavinckian search for the rational within the real entails.