Prof. van den Brink holds the Chair of Theology & Science at the VU School 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 in the fields of science-and-religion and the Christian doctrine of creation. While his previous work focused on the interaction (and specifically the compatibility) of Christian theology and theories of biological evolution, his current research is mainly concentrated in the following two projects:
(1) 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. The project is part of FOAT, a VU-based research group working on the Future of Academic Theology led by Van den Brink
(2) A theology of the Anthropocene: how do the many challenges of the Anthropocene (like the global climate crisis) interact with existing patterns of Christian thinking and what forms of theological innovation and/or retrieval may be required in light of these challenges?
Prof. van den Brink is a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and a life-long 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 and scholars of all sorts.
In 2024, along with two colleagues Van den Brink published an edited volume on Progress in Theology (with Routledge). In 2025 his Dutch book Het experiment van broeder Juniper - a collection of 12 essays on interactions between science and religion - came out at KokBoekencentrum (Utrecht). The next book project is entitled A Christian Theology of the Anthropocene (Bloomsbury, London).
Since Van den Brink currently supervises some 15 PhD-students, potential new PhD-candidates in the field are discouraged to turn to him for supervision.
As a member of the works council in his faculty, Van den Brink in particular strives for democratization of policy-making procedures in the university.
Most recent update: August 11, 2025
