Introduction⤒🔗

Every religion has certain characteristics that sets it apart from its rivals. There are different traditions, customs, rituals, ceremonies, modes of worship and styles of preaching. Limiting ourselves to Christianity and preaching, there is a marked difference, for instance, between Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Pentecostal and Reformed or Calvinistic preaching. It does not require a high degree of religious sophistication to be able to recognize certain unique characteristics both in content and delivery when listening to preachers from different backgrounds and traditions. This is true also of Dutch Calvinistic preaching. Whereas there is something distinctive about this kind of preaching, there are also important differences when it comes to sermon content and emphases.

Old and New School Dutch Calvinists←⤒🔗

Broadly speaking, Dutch Calvinistic preaching may be divided into two categories. First, there are the Old school or traditional Calvinists who insist on experimental or experiential preaching. This branch of Calvinism is found in several smaller denominations in the Netherlands such as the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken (Christian Reformed or FRC); Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Netherlands Reformed Congregations), Oud Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Old Reformed Congregations), the Reformed Alliance, a conservative group within the recently organized Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (Protestant Church in the Netherlands) and various smaller splinter groups.¹

Then there are the so-called Neo-Calvinists, represented in the Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Reformed Churches of the Netherlands), which have recently amalgamated with the above-mentioned PKN, and also in the Vrijgemaakte Kerken (Liberated Churches). Despite important differences between these two federations, they are both averse to experiential preaching as found in Old Calvinist circles.²

Exemplary or Redemptive — Historical Preaching←⤒🔗

In the nineteen thirties the Dutch Reformed community went through a prolonged controversy between those advocating "exemplary" or moralistic preaching and those insisting on a strictly "redemptive-historical" approach. The spokesmen for the latter included Dr. K. Schilder, who may be called the originator of the redemptive-historical method, B. Holwerda, C. Veenhof, D. Van Dijk and J. Spier. These men complained about the method most ministers at that time (1920s and 30s) were using in preach­ing historical texts. Their main objection was that those who used this method tended to hold up historical characters as examples to be followed — hence the term "exemplary" preaching. They charged that thus no justice could be done to the meaning of the text. "The point at issue," said Van Dijk,

 is not primarily whether the truths proclaimed are biblical, but whether these truths are actually revealed in the preaching-text. Ministry of the Word ... is to proclaim to the congregation that message which God gives in the text. (Hence) when one studies the text, he must try to discover its special content. That specific content must be preached, not notions —  however beautiful — which could equally well be tacked onto other texts.³

Defenders of the "exemplary" method were quick to point out that their opponents with their "redemptive-historical" approach reduced sermons to dry lectures on Bible history with no relevant application for the hearers. While the advocates of the "redemp­tive-historical" method have raised some very legitimate questions regarding the proper exegesis of Scripture, they went much too far in their rejection of the "exemplary" approach.

The New Direction←⤒🔗

It is no coincidence that almost all the representatives of the "redemptive-historical" school were members of the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy. This Association was formed in 1935, shortly after the publication of H. Dooyeweerd's Philosophy of the Law-Idea.

What characterizes the "Dooyeweerdians" is an almost excessive concern with culture and the externals of religion, and a corresponding de-emphasis on the more inward and spiritual side of religion. The same men who were critical of the "exemplary" method of preaching, also objected to what they regarded as latent pietism with its three daughters: subjectivism, individualism and spiritualism. These, they said, were the historical roots of the Dutch Calvinistic churches, and they saw themselves as the apostles of the "New Direction."

Over against the alleged subjectivism of the exemplary-minded preachers, they advocated not objectivism, as one might expect, but rather what they termed the "normative" character of preaching. According to Spier, "The Word of God is neither objective nor subjective ... (but) the power of God unto sal­vation ... it is the dominating norm for our lives." And C. Veenhof adds: "Scripture is kerygma, address and appeal ... (and) in it God lays hold on us. Scripture may never he divorced from the speaking God: it is His Word. Christ is present in the Word; He stands behind it as the divine Logos; the Word is never without His Spirit; Word and Spirit always go together."⁴

In this way, the men of the "New Direction" sought to overcome the age-old subjective-objective dilemma. But the attempt has failed. When all is said and done, they did only succeed in getting rid of the subjective element in the preaching and as a result sermons became exegetical treatises with very little spiritual application. As one of Schilder's opponents commented: "Schilder's sermons were not much different from his lectures, they were intellectualistic in character, and preponderantly objective, and the application merely consisted of 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'" If this sounds biased, here's what a close friend said of Schilder's pulpit work: "His sermons were always dominated by stringent objectivity; he was averse to all subjectivism and mysticism. He also disliked applications because he realized their worthlessnessEEE."⁵

Covenantal Versus Individualistic Preaching←⤒🔗

The second characteristic of pietism as defined by Schilder and his associates, is individualism. This "disease" they tried to cure with a renewed emphasis on the covenant. The reason why this was thought to be such an effective weapon against individualism becomes clear from the following statement of S.G. DeGraaf. He says in his book, Promise and Deliverance, "In the covenant God always draws near to His people as a whole — never just to individuals. Because of the covenant, the entire people rests secure in God's faithfulness, and every individual member of the covenant shares in that rest as a member of the community."⁶

The third characteristic of pietism, according to the men of the "New Direction," was spiritualism, or as Neo-Calvinists preferred to call it, mysticism. This word became a kind of catch-all term covering everything that was considered undesirable in religion. Mysticism was thought to be responsible for anthro­pocentricism (man-centredness), the nature-grace dichotomy, introversion, excessive self-examination, lack of assurance, etc., etc. Schilder accused those given to mystical ten­dencies of turning the attention away from the world outside and closing the eye "to what God has wrought and will work on the broad highways of redemptive and revelational history." All that remains, he concluded, "is God and the soul embracing each other." ⁷  He felt that the only way to rid the church of these mystical tendencies was to stress once again the great Reformation theme of Sola Scriptura, and to proclaim the relevance of God's Word for all areas of life.

From what has been said so far one could easily conclude that the Reformed churches in the thirties were full of subjectivists, individualists and mystics, and that the criticisms of Schilder and others were really called for. But were these evils really so widespread in these churches of which Schilder was still a member at that time? No, they were not. There were, indeed, some within the Calvinist camp whose piety was unhealthy and mystical in the wrong sense of that word. But this was not the case in the major Reformed denominations. What the men of the "New Direction" were objecting to was not the excesses of a wrong kind of experimental preaching, but rather the remnants of a healthy, biblical experimental preaching, which at one time had characterized all of Dutch Calvinism. J.H. Bavinck, one of the defenders of the "exemplary" school, diagnosed the real nature of his opponent's attack when he wrote, "the new spirit is averse to the soul's religious experiences and the inner marks of the Christian."⁸

Objections Against Discriminating Preaching←⤒🔗

As might be expected, the New school was also opposed to discriminating preaching, because such preaching assumes that the visible church is made up of converted and unconverted people. While recognizing the possibility that there may be some hypocrites within the congregation, the "redemptive-historical" men objected vigorously to any preaching which addressed itself to different types of hearers. Here is what the Rev. D. Van Dijk wrote:

The preacher who has accepted a confessional church which excommunicates all who demonstrate in their lives that they do not belong to the Lord's congregation, does not have the right to sift the people once more when addressing them ... The preacher who does this commits three wrongs: he insults the church of Christ by addressing it as a mixed multitude; he harms the church of Christ because believers may begin to doubt and hypocrites tend to close their ears at the familiar refrain; and finally, he retards the upbuilding of the church because his view of the hearers is bound to distort the goal and content of his sermons.⁹

The above statement points up the essential difference between the traditional or Old school Calvinism, and the "New Direction" or New school Calvinism. These two schools, although having a common origin in the Reformation, may be traced to quite different developments in subsequent Reformed history.

Kuyper's Neo-Calvinism←⤒🔗

The "redemptive-historical" school of preaching, as was pointed out, was and is espoused by men influenced by Dooyeweerd's Philosophy of the Law-Idea. This philosophy, in turn, has its roots in the Neo-Calvinism of Dr. A. Kuyper. This giant among theologians dominated the whole theological scene in the Netherlands for over forty years (1880-1920). Kuyper was a great man, but as often happens with such men, they can make great mistakes too.

Presumptive Regeneration←⤒🔗

One of his greatest mistakes, certainly from the point of view of the Old Calvinists, was his doctrine of presumptive regeneration. Kuyper propounded the thesis that children born of believing parents must be presumed to be regenerated and dealt with as such. This soon came to mean that being born into the covenant was almost a guarantee that one would go to heaven. To be sure, Kuyper himself stressed the need for self-examination, but as time went on, the call to soul-searching was heard less and less, until the men of the "New Direction" called for an end of this practice altogether, for reasons already mentioned. The result was that a new generation of covenant children grew up who never learned the meaning of John 3:3. Many of these children grew up to become ministers, and it is to be feared that not a few of them were strangers to experiential religion.

Here we have, if not the cause, then certainly a cause of the present malaise in the Dutch Reformed churches. When men who have not experienced the new birth themselves become ministers in the church of Christ, they will do little more than perpetuate error and emphasize at best only the intellectual side of religion, and not its spiritual or experiential aspects.

Preaching will be objective, rather than subjective, and the call to faith will result in people giving mental assent to the truths of Scripture. In other words, there will be historical, rather than saving faith.

Also, in such an environment the "fruits" of faith are likely to be outwardly oriented, rather than inwardly directed. Where historical faith is mistaken for saving faith, there will be an effort made, of course, to let that faith come to expression. Well, in Neo-Calvinist circles faith has come to expression in an unprecedented interest in and concern for culture and the so-called cultural mandate. As William Young says in his article, ''Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism":

Culture is now understood in the widest possible sense, to include economic and political activity as well as the arts and, thus understood, is made to become the preoccupation of the Reformed Christian. Calvinism ceases to be concerned above all with the sovereign grace of God in the salvation of the elect, but becomes a label to cover aesthetic dilettantism and political activism.¹⁰

Roots of Old School Calvinistic Preaching←⤒🔗

Let us now take a look at the roots of traditional or historic Calvinistic preachingin The Netherlands. These roots are to be found in both the Reformation of the sixteenth and the Second Reformation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Neo-Calvinists have often charged that everything they found objectionable, such as subjectivism, individualism, marks of grace and discriminating preaching, must be attributed to the influence of Puritanism and Pietism. These movements, they charge, have steered the Dutch Reformed in the wrong direction, away from the pure Calvinism of Geneva.

It cannot be denied that Dutch Calvinism as it was found in the Reformed Churches prior to Abraham Kuyper's ascendancy, and in several denominations even today, has been greatly influenced by Puritanism and to a lesser extent by German Pietism.

Puritanism, both in its British and Dutch varieties, was not only concerned with the salvation and sanctification of individuals. At least in its early stages, Puritans aimed also at the reformation of the Church as a whole, and society as well.

Dutch Puritans and their Concerns←⤒🔗

The Dutch Puritans, even more than their English counterparts, had reason to be thankful for what the Reformation had accomplished in their land. The Reformed Church had become the established church in The Netherlands, and especially after the great Synod of Dort, sound doctrine was preached from all its pulpits. Yet the more discerning among the Dutch clergy realized that purity of doctrine alone is not sufficient. They knew that unless a sound profession was adorned by a holy walk, the Reformation would eventually lose its hold on the people. Consequently, they began to work towards a more thoroughgoing reformation.

Concerned about the growing number of nominal Christians in the church, the Puritan-minded preachers began to differentiate between true and false converts and they showed from Scripture the marks of a believer and a hypocrite.

That some of these men went too far in their zeal to separate the precious from the vile was to be expected. And that some became disillusioned when they saw that in spite of all their efforts to reform the church and society, things remained pretty much the same, so that they gave up and began to withdraw into conventicles of like-minded believ­ers — that too is understandable. But despite the shortcomings and failures of some of them, the Dutch Puritans on the whole, were truly God-fearing men with a real burden for souls and a deep concern for the glory of God.

Objective-Subjective←⤒🔗

Characteristic of Dutch Puritan preaching is that it was objective-subjective. Calvinists of the Old school believed, and still believe that true, biblical preaching ought to be explication and application of God's Word. By application they do not just mean relevant preaching, in the sense that the preacher should apply his text to everyday life. That, to be sure, has to be done also. But by application they mean rather the subjective appropriation on the part of the hearers of that which is preached. Against the objection of the Neo-Calvinists that such application is the work of the Holy Spirit and should therefore be left to Him, Old Calvinists insist that while it is indeed the Spirit Who applies the Word, preachers must so divide the Word as to give the Spirit something to apply.

About seventy years ago, Rev. I. Kievit, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church (Alliance), and a prominent representative of the Old Calvinist school of preaching, wrote a book entitled Objective-Subjective Preaching: The Demand of Holy Scripture. In this book the author first explains the philosophic distinction between objective and subjective and then says this about objective preaching:

Objective preaching speaks about faith, conversion, repentance, God, salvation, and Christ. It deals with the truth, but it is without life and without experience. There is no heartbeat in such preaching. The preacher delivers an essay or discourse, but it is dead and spiritless. Such preaching petrifies and genders pride, for historical faith is considered to be saving faith. In fact, objective preaching is not administration of the Word. For it does not explain how Christ becomes the possession of the sinner. Of course, the preacher will say that it is by faith, but how that faith is worked by grace or how it is exercised, you don't hear.

And then he gives this advice to ministers of the Word:

The preacher must not only point to Christ and speak of the promises that are given, but he must also speak about the exercises of the heart in regard to the appropriation of the promises and their fulfillment in our life. The preacher must not only explain who Christ is and for whom He came into the world, but he must also point out the way that leads to Christ. He must not only point to the necessity of Christ, but also how Christ and the lost sinner are brought together, how (all emphasis in this quota­tion mine, C.P.1) this faith relationship is established, and how Christ makes room for Himself in the sinner's heart. Many of these elements are missing in sermons today and therefore the people receive stones for bread and they start to look elsewhere for food. Of course, the objective element comes first. We can and may only draw the fullness of the objective truths from Scripture. But the subjective experiences and exercises may never be forgotten. These things also belong to the body of the sermon. If they are missing, the sermon cannot be called Scriptural.¹¹

These excerpts clearly show that this minister stood firmly in the Puritan Reformed tradition. That tradition, however, does not begin in the seventeenth century with the fathers of Dort, as some charge, but with Calvin and the other Reformers. It is very significant that most of the quotations in Kievit's book are not from representatives of the Second Reformation, as one would expect, but rather from John Calvin. For instance, he quotes the great Reformer as saying this about the purpose of preaching:

The end of the whole Gospel ministry is that God, the fountain of all felicity, communicate Christ to us who are separated from God by sin and hence ruined, that we may from Him enjoy eternal life; that in a word, all heavenly treasures be so applied to us that they be no less ours than Christ's Himself.¹²

Calvin's View of Preaching←⤒🔗

Calvin believed that in the preaching of the Word there are two ministers at work: the external minister who holds forth the vocal word which is received by the ears, and the internal minister or Holy Spirit, Who "by His secret virtue effects in the hearts of whomsoever He will their union with Christ through faith.RRR" ¹³  Apart from this applicatory work of the Holy Spirit, Calvin says, "Christ remains of no value to us, and therefore at a great distance from us." ¹⁴  It is the Spirit Who takes the Christ "out there" and brings Him to us, causing Him to dwell in our hearts by faith, which He works in us by His secret operation.

Thus Calvin clearly distinguished between the objective and the subjective aspects of preaching; therefore those who try to do away with this distinction cannot appeal to him for support.

Response to Calvin's View←⤒🔗

The men of the "New Direction" were fully aware that Calvin followed the exemplary method of preaching. Dr. D. Van Dijk credits Dr. J. Douma with irrefutably and clearly demonstrating that the Reformer of Geneva "considered himself to be called by God to preach sacred history in an exemplary manner," and that "not only Calvin, but all the Reformed preachers held that conviction.¹⁵  But this admission did not dissuade them from levelling a scathing critique on that time honoured method.

Dr. H. Bavinck←⤒🔗

Another characteristic of Dutch Calvinistic preaching of the Old school is that it is dis­criminating. While Neo-Calvinists maintain that preachers have no right to separate between those who have made profession of faith lest they should cause believers to doubt their state, the Old Calvinists insist on such separation. Dr. H. Bavinck, who came out of the Old Calvinist school of the Secession of 1834, followed Kuyper in many things, but he disagreed with his col­league's doctrine of presumptive regeneration, which fostered this non-discriminatory preaching. In his book Calling and Regeneration, he warns against a type of preaching that assumes that all professing believers in a given congregation are saved. Because such preaching proceeds from the ideal, it fails to appreciate reality and ignores the lessons of history. The result is that faith in the confession is confused with the con­fession of faith, and a dead orthodoxy, which contents itself with an intellectual consent to doctrine, is fostered. Under such preaching, Bavinck warns,

there is but little concern about the disposition of the heart and the purity of life. As Israel rested on its descent from Abraham and on the temple that was in their midst, so many members of the New Testament church are beginning to build their hopes for eternity on the external ecclesiastical privileges wherein they share: baptism, confession, the Lord's Supper, and thus they fall into a false complacency. Although the church is a gathering of true believers in Christ, there must yet constantly go forth in her midst the summons to faith and repentance.¹⁶

Calvin's Institutes and Commentaries←⤒🔗

Again, the above statements of Bavinck have their roots, not just in Puritanism, which, as we know, insisted on a discriminating ministry, but also in the Reformation and in Calvin. Both in his commentaries and his Institutes he makes clear that he does not believe that all who profess Christ are truly in Christ. For instance, commenting on Acts 11:23, which tells of Barnabas exhorting believers to cleave unto the Lord with purpose of heart, Calvin says this:

We learn from Barnabas' definition of the way to persevere, as continuing with purpose of heart, that faith has put down living roots only when it is grounded in the heart. Accordingly, it is no wonder that hardly one in ten of the number of those who profess the faith persevere right to the end, since very few know the meaning of good-will and purpose of heart.¹⁷

Again, commenting on Psalm 15:1, "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?" he writes,

David saw the temple crowded with a great multitude of men who all made a profession of the same religion, and presented themselves before God as to the outward ceremony; and, therefore, assuming the person of one wondering at the spectacle, he directs his discourse to God, who, in such a confusion and medley of characters, could easily distinguish his own people from strangers.

This is how he applies this passage:

As we too often see the Church of God defaced by much impurity, to prevent us from stumbling at what appears so offensive, a distinction is made between those who are permanent citizens of the Church, and strangers — who are mingled among them for a time. God's sacred barn-floor will not be perfectly cleansed before the last day, when Christ at His coming will cast out the chaff; but He has already begun to do this by the doctrine of His gospel, which on this account He terms a fan.¹⁸

Calvin and Covenant Membership←⤒🔗

Neo-Calvinists, as we saw, try to combat individualism with a renewed emphasis on the doctrine of the covenant, and they often appeal to Calvin, who, they claim, also stressed the importance of this key doctrine of Scripture. This is true, but unlike some of his modern disciples, Calvin did not make membership in the covenant a kind of admission ticket to heaven. He taught, indeed, that as Abraham and his seed were adopted into the covenant of grace, so New Testament believers and their children are included in the same covenant. He even called covenant membership a general election, which he, however, distinguished from particular election. In a sermon on Deuteronomy 10:15-17 Calvin explains his view on the covenant this way:

But meanwhile let us note that there has been a general election which pertains to all the people (the Jews), which deserves to be highly esteemed; however, it does not profit unless each one for his own part is participating in it ... See here ... the election of God whereby he puts such difference between the lineage of Abraham and all the rest of the world ... Lo, here is an election which pertains in general to all the children of Abraham, but it was necessary that such a grace was to be ratified by faith ... For we see that many of them were cut off ... Now, then, the election of God which extended itself to all the people was not sufficient, but it was necessary that each one should be a participant of it for himself. How? By faith. But let us see from whence faith proceeds: God has willed to confirm his grace in those in whom it pleased him to do so ... Lo, here a double election of God. The one extends itself to all the people, because circumcision was given indifferently to all ... and the promises likewise were common. However, it is necessary that God add a second grace, namely, that he touches the hearts of his elect ... and these come to him, and he causes them to receive the good which is offered them.¹⁹

Concluding Remarks←⤒🔗

Membership in the covenant or visible church, then, while a great blessing and privilege, does not guarantee salvation. There has to be faith and all other graces that accompany salvation, such as repentance, sorrow for sin, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, a close walk with God, and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. These things must be insisted on in our preaching. For unless it comes to what the Puritans called a "closing with Christ," unless we as wretched and undone sinners learn to cast ourselves on God's mercy revealed in His dear Son, yes, unless God embraces our souls and accepts us in the Beloved, our religion is but a shell, and an outward show. The men of the "New Direction" may call this sickly mysticism, but without this expe­riential, that is individual, personal and intimate heart knowledge, we remain dry and dead bones that no amount of exegetically correct preaching can bring to life.

We can learn much from the redemptive-historical method of preaching, but we make a huge mistake if we neglect the exemplary and discriminating aspects of biblical proclamation. Without pointed, serious yet warm and loving application, the sermon may instruct the mind, but it will not reach the heart in a life changing, saving way. The Old Calvinists understood this. Therefore they preached as they did, with a sense of urgency, knowing that the eternal destiny of their hearers was at stake. As Richard Baxter used to say:

I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.

Baxter's preaching and that of many Puritans was a Spirit-anointed and Spirit-dependent preaching, "not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assur­ance" (1 Thess. 1:5). That kind of preaching has been blessed by God for centuries, not just during Puritan times or the Reformation era, but from the days of the apostles. Such preaching cannot be learned in a seminary, not even the best one, but only in the school and at the feet of Him who calls to the ministry only those who are first converted themselves, before they go out to convert others. May the Lord thrust forth many such labourers into His harvest (Luke 10:2).