Böcker av Philippus Jacobus Hoedemaker

Philippus Hoedemaker and Abraham Kuyper shared a dream: to establish a university on the foundation of the Reformed faith. They were among the three or four men in the entire nation who, by Philippus van Ronkel's count, could pull off such a thing. Hoedemaker was not deterred by the smallness of the beginnings, for God could accomplish great things through such a Gideon's band. The church needed it and the nation needed it. Unbelief would not prevail.They will not have itThe old NetherlandsIt remains, despite its miseryThe property of God and the fathers!So they sang with Isaac da Costa.Hoedemaker's efforts to pursue science on the Reformed basis, in which the Bible and theology play a central role, is chronicled in the addresses included here. The Dedication given at the founding of the university explains the intention in broad strokes. A thorough justification of the Reformed basis of the university is provided in "The Antirevolutionary Principle and Higher Education." From there Hoedemaker proceeds to a historical investigation of the Reformed principle vis-à-vis its main antagonists in the Dutch university context - Cartesianism and rationalism, Roman Catholicism, and Lutheranism. In "Church and School" he once again justifies the existence of the Free University and its Reformed principle, but acknowledges some dissension in the ranks, as the university begins to feel the effect of the church struggle. And in the provocatively titled " Why Study Theology at the Free University?" he confronts his students with the question, are you simply seeking a paying position somewhere, or is your heart committed to pursuing the truth, to putting science on its proper basis, regardless of the cost? The question was anything but academic, as the university was not accredited and its graduates could count on employment neither in the national church nor in civil government.Then came the church split and Hoedemaker's departure from the Free University. But he could still speak of the love he bore for that institution, despite its departure from the Reformed principle as he formulated it. "All the church and all the people" had become his motto, something which Kuyper and the Free University left far behind.

Once upon a time, the state shared the public square with the church. The central location of the church building in every European town is mute testimony to this state of affairs. But those days are long gone. Nowadays there is an implicit or explicit consensus regarding the proper place of the church: out of sight and out of mind.How has this sea change come about? Through a complete metanoia ("change of mind") regarding the public square. Church and state used to be in agreement about ultimate reality, but then came the wars of religion and the desire for a neutral state. This gave us the agnostic state, incapable of making any judgement regarding truth or falsehood regarding religion. Freedom of religion has been the result. But this freedom has come with a price - the loss of a grip on ultimate reality, on transcendent standards and values. It is every person for him- or herself, the triumph of congeries of opinion over truth.Under these conditions, the church has itself experienced a transformation. It has been fragmented into myriad churches, none of which may claim ultimacy, all of which claim to proclaim the truth. We no longer have the body of Christ visibly expressed; instead we have denominations, private-legal constructs expressive of various consumer-oriented flavors of faith orientation.Has unity then been abandoned? No; for it is not a question of unity or no unity, it is a question of what kind of unity. In the modern world, the churches have exchanged unity in terms of confession, with unity in terms of politics. Political parties are the vehicles through which Christians express a joint conviction. And this has brought the church down to the level of the interest group and the lobbyist, the inevitable result of an age of denominationalism.Over 100 years ago, P. J. Hoedemaker already delineated and analyzed this state of affairs. The abysmal condition of the Dutch Reformed church formed the historical backdrop for his analysis, but the principles he developed during the course of his critique of the national church are applicable across the board in the modern world. Hoedemaker excavates the biblical and Reformational foundations of ecclesiology, the basics apart from which the church cannot escape from its current abasement.

To this day, Abraham Kuyper stands as a shining example of responsible and effective Christian action in all areas of life. A leading journalist, theologian, churchman, and politician in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kuyper effectuated, during a career spanning 50 years, an astonishing metamorphosis of the Dutch political and ecclesiastical landscape. Lifting high the banner of the universal lordship of Christ, he managed to revitalize a moribund political party and mobilize the so-called kleyne luyden, the "little guys," into a social, ecclesiastical, educational, and political force to be reckoned with. And he did all of this while proclaiming, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!"What is less well understood is the degree to which Kuyper spoke out of two sides of his mouth. In fact, Kuyper shortchanged his trumpeted Christocratic agenda in the interest of political expediency. From early on he redefined theological categories in order to implement a dualism between church and state that could allow him to harness the church as a political action committee in the secularized democratic environment, all the while posturing as a champion of historic Christian theopolitical civilization.The epicenter of this revaluation of Christian values was Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, which mandated that the civil magistrate "remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of anti-christ may be thus destroyed, and the kingdom of Christ promoted." This, in the view of Kuyper and his movement, was a denial of true Calvinism, which championed freedom of conscience and religion.Hoedemaker disputed this, arguing that Kuyper had set up a straw man. Did Article 36 really entail violation of conscience and the elimination of religious freedom? No - this was a smokescreen. In fact, Kuyper's solution was the problem, as it did not take the Bible seriously. Hoedemaker returned to the Reformed fathers to recover a sound Reformed political theology, capable of being defended and advanced in the modern world.Hoedemaker had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kuyper to advance the very same agenda of Christ's lordship over every area of life. But he came to realize that Kuyper's practical agenda deviated fundamentally from this proclaimed agenda, starting with the separation from the national church and culminating in Kuyper's "mutilation" (A. A. van Ruler) of Article 36.