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The Last Things: Hope for This World and the Next. By Herman Bavinck. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996, 208 pp., $19.99 paper.
Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) has contributed much to Dutch Reformed theology through his monumental four-volume Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Reformed Dogmatics). The Dutch Reformed Translation Society (DRTS) is to be commended for making it available in English. This volume on eschatology is its first release and most timely in light of recent debates on the existence of hell and the millennium.
The book contains seven chapters which are divided into three parts. Part one consists of three chapters on the intermediate state. The first chapter interacts with how classical philosophy dealt with the question of immortality and introduces what the OT and NT say about death, sheol, the afterlife, and God's kingdom. The second chapter, entitled "After Death, Then What?", answers questions on purgatory, soul sleep, intermediate corporeality, necromancy, and ancestral worship. The third chapter, "Between Death and Resurrection," continues to explore what the life hereafter entails, whether there is a second chance for salvation, whether the soul needs to be further purified, and whether the dead needs the intercessory prayers of the living. True to the Reformed faith, Bavinck categorically rejects the doctrine of annihilation, soul sleep, veneration of saints and angels, reincarnation, purgatory, and the two limbos.
Part two consists of two chapters on the return of Christ. The first (chap. 4) discusses how OT prophecies ought to be interpreted; Bavinck opposes a literal interpretation. According to him, a spiritual hermeneutic is required because of "the...