Personality and Religious Experience: Herman Bavinck and the Psychology of Religion

Abstract In this article I observe Herman Bavinck’s engagement with the psychology of religion through the lens of anthropology. I argue that he seeks to maintain that religious experiences such as regeneration and conversion, while psychologically mediated, are nonetheless of a divine origin. To do this, I first analyze Bavinck’s reception of the science, showing how he ultimately charges its representatives with the inability to make a pronouncement on the truth of religion and experience. Second, I examine the anthropological categories the psychology of religion deployed to mediate between reductionistic and supernaturalistic explanations of experience. This will help uncover the heart of Bavinck’s critiques: the movement’s attempt to explain religion while rejecting metaphysics—namely in its rejection of a unified, substantial self—and revelation. Third, I provide a sketch of Bavinck’s account of the anthropological effects of regeneration and conversion to show how they are at once psychologically mediated and of divine origin.