Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since February 2006. (help, talk) |
Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1904-1996) was for years the leading theologian of the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands (GKN). He occupied the Chair in systematic theology of the Faculty of Theology, Free University in Amsterdam, an institution of Christian commitment but independent of State and Church - while receiving support grants like all other Dutch universities and while interactive especially with the GKN constituency, and other denominational constituencies as well. One of Berkouwer's crowning achievements was to be delegated by the Council of the GKN to attend the upcoming assemblies of the International Council of Christian Church (a world fundamentalist body that met that year in Amsterdam) and the World Council of Churches (the ecumenical body that met that same year, 1957 in New Delhi, India). In his report back to the GKN, Berkouwer recommended that they join the WCC; and they did so, becoming one of the first evangelical denominations to enter the mainstream Ecumenical Movement, and remaining active over the decades.
Contents |
[edit] GKN and liberated GKN
Berkouwer completed his dissertation and received his doctorate in 1932 (diss: Faith and Revelation in German Theology). He came to his post after the Second World War (WWII) in which the Dutch national community suffered much from Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, and culminating in the Hunger Winter of 1944. The Free University, like all Dutch institutions of higher learning, had been shut down, so there was no public teaching. Nevertheless, preaching and pamphlet wars raged in church and society. One issue was the negative tone of Berkouwer's predecessor, Prof Dr Valentine Hepp to use his role of systematician of Reformed theology to attack two movements, one was that led by D. H. Th. Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd (VU professors of philosophy, and law, respectively) who advocated Reformational philosophy. The other was the in-church movement led by Dr. Klaas Schilder, in regard to whom Hepp scored a pyrrhic victory with Berkouwer's leading involvement as president of the GKN Council, meeting on and off between 1943 and 1945 when that Council (Synod) finally forced Schilder, his colleague Dr S. Greijdanus, and other theologians and pastors out of the denominational community along with a good number of GNK churches. These reorganized themselves as the Liberated GKN churches. Later, Berkouwer indicated regret that he had helped back the split-off group into a corner, and that some other way of handling the differences should have been found.
When at last Hepp was gone from his important Chair, Berkouwer succeeded him. He is known principally for three things.
[edit] Studies in dogmatics
First, Berkouwer wrote a new theological short essay in almost every issue of the GKN weekly Gereformeerde Weekblad, which garnered responses from clergy and laity all over the Netherlands and beyond. Second, a good part of the articles arose from class lectures to his students at VU, where the newspaper letters of response might carry some weight and sometimes occasioned Berkouwer's refinements for his students at least. Third, the newspaper theological-articles, letters of response, and classroom refinements in turn led to the publication of books over many years under the general series name, Studies in Dogmatics (the latter word being rendered in English usually as systematic theology). The number of titles in the SiD series eventually came to a total of 14 in English, due to the combination of some paired Dutch volumes rendered into a single volume in English. Among key works were The Person of Christ, The Work of Christ, two volumes on Sin, a volume on The Providence of God (which refers to Herman Dooyeweerd's philosophy), General Revelation (again refers to Dooyeweerd), and The Image of God (which especially made the growing movement of philosophers, scientists, and theologians whose thinking was akin to the ideas of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd much more comfortable than they had been under Hepp). Berkouwer's leadership within the denomination to which most of them belonged was strengthened by this openness of the leading GKN theologian, and contributed to Berkouwer's developing in turn his own position in tandem with that of his friend Dr. Hendrikus Berkhof, the leading professor of systematics in the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church, affiliated to the Dutch Monarchy and thus to the Netherland's State, and from which the Gereformeerde Kerken had split-off in the Nineteenth Century). The Dutch WIKI entry for Berkhof [1] informs us that he was appointed the State Church professor of Systematic and Biblical Theology on the Theology Faculty of the State University of Leiden in 1960 and remained there until he was emeritated in 1981. In 1952, Berkhof wrote a book on Crisis of Middle Orthodoxy (apparently never translated into English, while the Dutch original Crisis der middenorthodoxie underwent four reprints). In an end-of-career work published in English but not Dutch, Two Hundred Years of Theology: A Report of a Personal Journey (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989), Berkhof assessed (along with many other philosophers, philosophical theologians, and systematic theologians), a few leading Gereformeerde historical figures, including Abraham Kuyper, and also his own contemporary, Berkouwer - of whom Berkhof said that the author of the Studies in Dogmatics who was so leery of speculation, suffered from being "not speculative enough." But for the author of the SiD series this was a compliment, since Berkouwer wanted to produce work in systematic theology that was grounded in careful exegesis of the Biblical base-texts for all doctrinal teaching, according to a Reformed tradition of interpretation of the Bible. In keeping with that policy in the SiD series, Berkouwer mentions extremely few philosophers and apparently interacts, even then sparingly, with only one contemporary philosopher, Dooyeweerd, who theologically seems to have had some kinship with Berkouwer's and Berkhof's Middle Orthodoxy. As to Berkhof, perhaps his most important translated work is Christ the Meaning of History (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1966).
The emerging collegial view of these two theologian-friends became known as Middle Orthodoxy, and it aimed in an even more ecumenical direction than the Hervormde/Gereformeerde relationship of the time would suggest. However, it did not extend so far as to relieve the conscience of the VU theological faculty in regard to their required subscription to the Sixteenth-Century Canons of Dordt, a task which remained to Berkouwer's successor in the Chair of Dogmatics, Harry M. Kuitert. According to Ecumenical News International, Kuitert, after his own emeritation and by now the most widely read theologian in the Netherlands, broke completely with the Berkouwer and Middle Orthodox tradition, in his book, Jesus, the Inheritance of Christianity (1998). "Jesus supported the Jewish view of God, so he never saw himself as God on earth. He is not a Second God, nor the Second Person of the Holy Trinity," said aging Kuitert turning publicly to an informal unitarian stance, to the grief of those who continue to love and appreciate the work of Kuitert's mentor and promoter, G. C. Berkouwer.
Dogmatische Studiën / Studies in Dogmatics: The full list in the Dutch originals with their publication dates and pages is presented below with the corresponding list of the English translation titles, publication dates, and total pages. Please note that in subsequent reprints of the English, paginations vary from the original English edition. Also, technical matter in the Dutch that referred to earlier theological debates in that historical context have sometimes been removed in the English translations. The original publisher of the Dutch series is Kok (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); the English, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA).
Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 1949, 220 pp..............Faith and Justification, 1952, 207 pp
Geloof en Heiliging, 1949, 222 pp.........................Faith and Sanctification 1952, 193 pp
Geloof en Volharding, 1949, 215 pp......................Faith and Perseverance 1958, 256 pp
De Voorzienigheid Gods......................................The Providence of God 1952, 280 pp
De Algemene Openbaring, 1951, 280 pp................General Revelation, 1955, 336 pp
De Persoon van Christus, 1952, 334 pp.................The Person of Christ, 1954, 368 pp
Het Werk van Christus..........................................The Work of Christ, 1965, 358 pp
De Sacramenten, 1954, 407 pp..............................The Sacraments, 1969, 304 pp
De Verkiezing Gods, 1955, 414 pp.........................Divine Election, 1960, 336 pp
De Mens het Beeld Gods, 1957, 416 pp..................Man: The Image of God, 1962, 376 pp
De Zonde I, 1958, 230 pp.......................................Sin, 1971, 599 pp
De Zonde II, 1960, 360 pp
De Wederkomst van Christus I, 1961, 311 pp............The Return of Christ, 1972, 477 pp
De Wederkomst van Christus II, 1963, 282 pp
De Heilige Schrift I, 1966..........................................Holy Scripture, 1975, 377 pp
De Heilige Schrift II, 1967
De Kerk I Eenheid en Katholiciteit,* 1970, 260 pp........The Church, 1976, 438 pp
De Kerk II Apostoliciteit en Heiligheid,* 1972, 273pp
-
- Please note that the translation for the four descriptives regarding Kerk I & II (English: The Church), are in their order: Unity, Catholicity, Apostolicity and Holiness.
[edit] Roman Catholicism
Second, in 1948, he published the first of two books on Roman Catholicism, Conflict with Rome, in Dutch, later translated. After his attendance upon special invitation to the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Berkouwer published in Dutch, later translated, The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism.
[edit] Barth
Third, in 1936, Berkouwer had already published Karl Barth; in 1954, Berkouwer published in Dutch, later translated into English and widely read in the English-speaking world, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. Though this book was quite critical of Barth's thinking at points, Barth considered Berkouwer to be among the few of his reviewers who actually understood him.
[edit] His legacy
Berkouwer was very influential among Reformed and other denominations in North America, where the many volumes of his series, Studies in Dogmatics, were translated and published. He had a continuous flow of seminary graduates to study under him for the degree of Doctor of Theology. Altogether Berkouwer mentored about 46 students who received the ThD degree under his supervision. Many of them became leaders in Christian thought abroad; and, often enough, denominational chief officers.
