New Heidelberg Catechism Resources Added
Over the last few weeks, I’ve added more Lord’s Days to my collection of themes and divisions for Heidelberg Catechism preaching. I recently added Lord’s Days 9-11. There are now 27 Lord’s Days completed.
I use a number of print and online resources to compile these. One of them is an old two-v0lume set by J. Kok, Schetsen over den Heidelbergschen Catechismus: een handboek voor predikanten (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1903). As the title indicates, this is a handbook designed for Reformed ministers which provides sermon outlines for every Lord’s Day of the Catechism. In the introduction, he surveys past attempts to provide such resources. He mentions Ursinus and his lectures. Festus Hommius had translated these into Dutch and they became very influential. Jeremias Bastingius also expounded on the Catechism. His work was first published in Latin and then later translated into Dutch. E. van den Hoogt, a preacher in Nieuwendam, published some of his expositions of the Catechism — however, this does not seem to be a very well-known work; I can’t find any trace of it online. Others who lectured or preached on the Catechism and published sketches or outlines on it included Samuel Maresius, Joh. Rod. Rodolph, Knibbe, Gargon, Molenaar, Groenewegen, and Felingius. After the time of Kok, there was a collection of catechism sermon sketches by K. Dijk (De catechismuspreek in haar verscheidenhied) — also very useful. So, there is a long tradition of publishing sketches or outlines of sermons dealing with the Heidelberg Catechism. It is lamentable that this tradition is basically lost. The cause can likely be attributed to the hegemony (except in a few backwaters in NAPARC-dom) of the idea that preaching that follows the Heidelberg Catechism is not the preaching of the Word of God.
