Prof. van den Brink holds the Chair of Theology & Science at the Faculty of Religion and Theology. His research is mainly focused on the interface of Christian theology and the natural sciences, but Van den Brink also participates in wider debates on the relationship between science and religion. His current research is concentrated on three projects: (1) The way in which evolutionary theory coheres with classical theistic beliefs, esp. in the Reformed tradition; this project issued in his book Reformed Theology and Evolutionary Theory (Grand Rapids 2020), a precursor of which appeared in Dutch in 2017. (2) The nature and future of theology as an academic discipline; the output of this project is mainly in the form of scholarly papers, an edited volume on "progress in theology" and related contributions. (3) Theological anthropology in the Anthropocene: to what extent are traditional ways of thinking in theological anthropology viable in facing the challenges of the Anthropocene (like global climate change) and what new ways of theological thinking may be required?
Prof. van den Brink is a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and a member of the Center for Theological Inquiry (Princeton, NJ). He also participates in the Abraham Kuyper Center for Science and the Big Questions at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He spent the Fall semester of 2021 as a Visiting Fellow of the Henry Center for Theological Understanding (HCTU) at Trinity International University, Deerfield IL.
In 2017, Van den Brink devised the plan to compose a "Science Bible" - a modern Bible translation along with hermeneutical notes which interpret the gap between the ancient near eastern and hellenistic cultures in which the Bible took shape and our own science-imbued world. This "Bible with contributions on faith, culture and science" was published in 2022 by the Dutch Bible Society, comprising contributions of 60+ Bible-loving scientists of all sorts.
In 2024, along with two colleagues Van den Brink will publish an edited volume on the theme of Progress in Theology (at Routledge).
