Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Feb/94

Contributor - Rev. Dr. Jonathan N. Gerstner

Title - Rediscovering The Dutch Reformed Tradition

Topic - Church History

One of the joys of my life was having the privilege of living for a year during the early 80's in the Dutch fishing village of Urk. I had only planned on spending a few days in Urk before moving to Utrecht to study church history at that famous university. For those days I stayed m an apartment in the old section of town, which had hardly changed since the days before the Second World War when Urk was still an island. Almost all the neighbourhood women, and a fair number of the men, still wore klederdracht (the local traditional dress). The cut-off age seemed about 50 for klederdracht, and most of the people living in the old section of town were from that generation, with the children and grandchildren having moved to the newer side of town. Hardly any spoke English, and the only way of communication was Dutch, or actually the local dialect. In this village there were 16 congregations 15 of which were reformed of one stripe or another. (The 16th was a small free evangelical congregation.) The wan-n welcome I received in Urk, convinced me that I would learn more of the Dutch Reformed tradition staying in Urk and commuting to Utrecht, than I ever could living in that more cosmopolitan university city. The decision to stay for the year in Urk was one of the best that I have ever made.

Because of course a tradition isn't something that is just taught, it is something which is lived. The confidence in the sovereign Lord of the wind and rains when one is on a boat in a storm on the North sea. The new understanding of the picture of the new heaven and new earth in which "the sea was no more" (Rev. 21:1), from viewing that verse on the monument to men and boys who died fighting the sea to earn a living. The countless lively discussions of the fine points of reformed theology with people covering the entire gamut of educational backgrounds. All these helped me live the Dutch Reformed tradition.

What are some of the key components of the Dutch Reformed tradition and the world view it produces? Let me list some of the characteristics I have discovered.

Cosmopolitan lineage

The Reformed Church in the Netherlands reflected the linguistic and cultural crossroads which the Netherlands has served for Europe. The way in which the diversity of ideas from the reformed world of the time flowed into the Netherlands is recorded for posterity in the three creeds of the church. The Heidelberg Catechism reflects the interaction with the German Reformed tradition, while The Belgic Confession, which was originally written in French shows the linkage with the French Reformed and the sole standard composed on Dutch soil, The Canons of Dort, reflects the interaction of an international reformed ecumenical synod addressing a crisis in the Dutch Reformed Church. The Dutch Reformed has constantly reached out to other branches of the world reformed tradition.

Covenantal world view

Next month we will devote the whole issue to covenant life, and I hope to write on the biblical view of covenant children. But it is clear in the Dutch Reformed tradition that a heavy emphasis is placed on the unity of the Old and New Testaments. We celebrate how we of the faith are Abraham's children. The remarkable sensitivity and heroism of so many Dutch in hiding Jews from the Holocaust is at least partly due to the high reverence for the Old -Testament and respect for the physical descendants of our spiritual father, Abraham. May we also honour this part of our heritage and prevent any root of antisemitism in our communion, even as we pray that our Jewish friends will find the Messiah.

The Worship of the Sovereign God The Dutch Reformed tradition experiences God as God. When one enters virtually any of the congregations in Urk, one can sense the awesome presence of God. Not a pin will drop. The minister will approach the pulpit with a sombre expression followed by a group of elders looking even more solemn. God is great and powerful, and must be handled with care. Yet the most healthy branch of the tradition, that influenced by the renewal movement called the Continuing Reformation, equally stresses the way of conversion by which the awesome God of Scripture through faith in Christ will make His dwelling with us!

One of the practical problems of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands is the problem of relatively small numbers of people coming to the Lord's Table. There are many factors in this development, many of which are unscriptural. But at least part of the background to this practice is the way in which the worship of God so reveals His majesty that anyone would take a pause before coming too close to His presence. Though it is certainly true that in the Dutch circles many converted souls are wrongly avoiding the Lord's Table, we must also note that in our North American churches many are coming to the Lord's table unworthily, not aware of the awesome significance of meeting the Lord. We desperately need to find the balance.

Similarly, we need to be sure that our congregations are places which center on the worship of the living God. His awesome presence needs to be felt. Ironically sometimes our churches have kept the rigidity about the externals of worship without maintaining its spirit. A key test of faithfulness to the tradition is the way in which the presence of the living God is felt during the worship service. I suspect that by using this test some of our most externally Dutch Reformed services in which one can hear a pin drop would fail miserably, while some of our more contemporary worship services would prove to be the true heir of the tradition.

Doctrinal Precision and a Tendency to Separatism

The most vivid memory of my time in Urk is the walk to church twice every Sunday. I lived almost a half hour walk from my congregation, which was Reformed (Hervormde) on Reformed (Gereformeerde) foundation. The pastor of this Reformed Alliance congregation, Dr. C.A. Tukker, himself a nationally renowned preacher, had brought me to Urk, so I naturally and gladly supported his congregation. However, I was not alone in taking a long walk and passing so many different congregations. The whole town took to the streets (very few would use a car) and work their way across the village passing each other on the way to their particular band of the reformed tradition. This of course took its extreme in the separatist churches (at least two of these congregations reputedly claimed to be the only true church in town), but even in our own denomination (Hervormde), the three distinct modalities present, though all or thodox, had little to do with each other. Many of the distinctions between congregations and denominations were over relatively minor points of doctrine and style of worship, which certainly is a part of the tradition which has followed us across the ocean. Still we must be aware that our culture tends to downplay even important points of doctrine, and we are in a greater danger of being unclear about major points of doctrine than we are of being overly precise. Indeed, the Reformed Church in Canada is evolving more and more into a church with different worship styles who nevertheless cooperate for the shared good of the Gospel, a type of evangelical modality church. As long as we preserve ourselves from the modalities which deny core Christianity, this diversity can indeed be healthy for us.

National vision

This part of the Dutch Reformed tradition is particularly strongly felt in our sister church the Hervorrnde Kerk. The sense that God has not let his Gospel come into the Netherlands without meaning it to have impact on the whole culture of the nation is very strong. Many hold the royal family in almost spiritual awe, despite their apparently superficial dedication to the Gospel. Some even speak of a national covenant. Suffice it to say that we as Canadians have perhaps not wrestled enough with God's purpose for bringing His Gospel to this our nation. We at least need to work to make our church a place of welcome for all Canadians who seek the Lord. Ethnic new church developments are thus a part of faithfulness to the Dutch Reformed national church vision applied to our multi-cultural land. Similarly, the dream of becoming a united reformed witness to influence Canada was thus born of both our United Church transfers and the Dutch Reformed tradition itself.

Experiential piety

Lastly the Dutch Reformed tradition heavily stressed the personal experience of the living God as essential to conversion. Conversion, at least in our orthodox reformed circles (Hervorinde) was always rooted by the Holy Spirit in an individual's experience. Similarly those who experience God are changed to live lives of grateful obedience. The experience of living with God then changes how one works and raises one's family. This reformed emphasis on personal piety has made us natural allies of the evangelical movement in North America. To be honest, in some senses we of the reformed experiential tradition are almost the ancestors of North America evangelicalism (via the Puritans and our own Dutch Reformed pietists like Theodorus Frelinghuysen.) Living out our tradition today means a lively evangelical piety which transforms all of our life.

A year in Urk has helped me see what the Dutch Reformed tradition can do for a community. Unfortunately we have at times been better in preserving the ethnicity, than the spiritual and biblical core of the tradition. If we can apply the core insights of the Dutch Reformed vision to Canada, we from so many national backgrounds can unite in a single burden to force our land to interact with the living God of Scripture. That is a dream worthy of the Lord of the Church, who has called us all to this land at this time.

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