Some New (to me anyway) Insights on Schilder
In my particular Reformed heritage the name of Klaas Schilder looms large. Most people don’t know about him today anymore, but in the days of my grandparents he was a big deal. Now there are two big problems when it comes to Schilder. First, just a fraction of what he wrote has been translated into English. Second, what he wrote, whether you read it in Dutch or in English, was often written in his unique style. This is a style which many readers today often find opaque.
In 2019, Marinus DeJong defended his doctoral dissertation on Schilder, “The Church is the Means, the World is the End.” You can find it online (in English) here. I only became aware of it recently. I’d like to share some of the insights I gained from it. Let me add a couple of caveats. First, I have not personally researched all of these insights to verify what DeJong says. Second, Brill has published a book by DeJong on Schilder entitled A Church for a Secular World. It appears to be a revamping of the dissertation. It’s possible that some of the insights I mention below have been revised in the process of preparing the new book. I don’t know and can’t check unless someone wants to donate the $120+ that Brill is charging. I’ll leave the comments open on this post for readers to chime in if they know something I don’t.
In point form, and with no further comment, here are some of the interesting points I gleaned from DeJong’s dissertation:
- In the Secession tradition, there were two ecclesiological strands: the legitimistic-ecclesiocentric (exemplified by Lucas Lindeboom) and the ecumenical (exemplified by Herman Bavinck). (pp.117-118)
- “…Schilder’s critique on Kuyper has a Barthian hue.” (p.131)
- Schilder wrote in 1932: “I do not even believe that a church has to be Reformed in order to be the true church in that place. Otherwise, I could see no institution in Russia or Turkey where Christ is doing something.” (p.132)
- Schilder preferred to use the adjective “lawful” over “true” when describing a church (p.190)
- Writing in the first edition of his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, KS “denies the possibility of common ground in the realm of epistemology, refuses the possibility of apologetics, and rejects natural theology and general revelation.” (p.194)
- In 1941, KS cooperated with Barthians from the Hervormde Kerk to produce an anti-Nazi statement. (p.203)
- The key issue in the Liberation of 1944 was not doctrinal, according to KS, but church political, e.g. the synodical binding to certain views. (p.240, cf. p.248)
- Schilder was opposed to the idea of a political party associated with the Liberated churches (GKV). (p.246). In the 1948 Dutch election, KS didn’t side with the GKV political party, but recommended people vote for the Anti-Revolutionary Party. (p.262)
- KS “never opposed cooperation with people from other churches as a matter of principle.” (p.278). In 1933, he defended his involvement in a Christian radio station with people from a variety of church backgrounds. “Church and radio station are two, Schilder asserts. What matters when it comes to the radio is people’s doctrine of Christ and Scripture, not the church to which they belong. ‘The matter of church membership is in this case irrelevant’, Schilder boldly writes to close his article.” (pp.149-150)
- After the Liberation of 1944, factions developed in the GKV. There was a radical faction that argued that Christian organizations should only have GKV members in their ranks. KS opposed this faction. He argued that “being properly ‘liberated’ means nothing else than what it meant to be ‘properly Reformed’ before 1944.” (pp.247-248)
