Herman Bavinck’s Trinitarian Theology: The Ontological, Cosmological, and Soteriological Dimensions of the Doctrine of the Trinity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recent scholarship on the Dutch, Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) has opened up new possibilities for examining the role of the doctrine of the Trinity in Bavinck’s systematic theology. Building on current research, this thesis suggests that Bavinck’s systematic theology can be identified as thoroughly trinitarian by identifying the ways that he uses the doctrine positively (structuring, norming, and informing) and negatively (apologetic) to construct his dogmatic theology. To do this, this dissertation utilizes an intriguing statement made by Bavinck within his treatment of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in his Reformed Dogmatics concerning the ontological, cosmological, and soteriological dimensions of the doctrine of the Trinity as a framework for understanding his systematic project. Taking this statement to indicate a trinitarian line of reasoning within Bavinck, this thesis argues that Bavinck’s systematic theology can be understood as his articulation of the ontological, cosmological, and soteriological dimensions of the Trinity properly distinguished, developed, and related to one another. Primarily expositional in nature, constructive in analysis, and creative in its use of the ontological, cosmological, and soteriological dimensions, this dissertation situates the current thesis within Bavinck scholarship (Introduction), provides an extended defense of using the dimensions (Chapter 1), and articulates each dimension and their relationships to one another (Chapters 2-4). While the primary goal of this thesis is to contribute to Bavinck scholarship, the closing chapter shifts to suggest Bavinck as a conversation partner to contemporary discussions concerning the systematic role of the doctrine of the Trinity and constructive development of doctrine (Chapter 5).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".