In the reformation of the church begun in 1924, the reformer was Herman Hoeksema. This is not a slighting of Henry Danhof and George Ophoff, the two ministers who were deposed with Hoeksema by the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). Danhof was influential g developing the doctrines that have come to distinguish the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), as his profound treatise of 1920 on the covenant, “De Idee van het Genadeverbond (“The Idea of the Covenant of Grace”), clearly shows. But Danhof soon abandoned the churches in which the reformation would be worked out to go his independent way. Besides, Hoeksema was the more prominent of the two in the controversy in the early 1920s.

Ophoff was Hoeksema’s loyal colleague from the beginning. In the struggle in the early 1950s within the PRC to maintain the reformation, it was Ophoff who clearly saw the threat to the PRC in the covenant theology of Klaas Schilder and who insisted that this theology be rejected, whatever the cost. But originally it was Hoeksema, five years older than Ophoff, who decisively influenced the younger pastor. Even in the schism of 1953 by which the gospel of sovereign grace was preserved in the PRC, Hoeksema came to play the leading role. Ophoff was content always to work in the shadow of his towering contemporary.

Life

Hoeksema was born near the city of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1886, the date of the birth also of Karl Barth. He was the child of a broken, poverty-stricken home. His father was an unbeliever, an adulterer, arid a drunk who abandoned his wife and their four young children. Herman Hoeksema is evidence that God establishes His covenant with the children of but one believing parent (I Cor. 7:14). He is also evidence that God delights to make something out of nothing in His church, thus “to bring to nought things that are” (I Cor. 1:28). It is interesting that this child of a failed marriage, who saw firsthand the misery ‘of the deserted wife and mother, later opposed the Reformed tradition by teaching that marriage is an unbreakable bond, so that even the deserted, “innocent” party is forbidden to remarry.

A godly mother had powerful influence upon her son for his own salvation and for the good of the church of Christ.

Having emigrated to the United States in 1904, Hoeksema sought the ministry in the CRC. He was trained at Calvin College (then, Calvin Preparatory School) and Calvin Seminary. In 1915, at the age of 29, he was ordained into the ministry in the CRC. When the conflict involved in the reformation reached its climax in 1924, Hoeksema was no brash novice, but a mature 38 (Luther was 34 in 1517).

Although he never engaged in graduate study or obtained an advanced degree, indeed this was impossible for him in the press of his work, he was a brilliant, well-read, and highly disciplined preacher, theologian, and author.

Hoeksema was a man of many gifts. He was physically strong and athletic, a good ice-skater and a swimmer who loved to disappear over the horizon on Lake Michigan and remain there for hours. An artist, he wrote poetry, hymns, and moving devotional pieces. His meditations in the magazine of the reformation, theStandard Bearer, are the motions of the heart that knows the great and good God. They demand to be published in book form. He was a painter whose oils are lovely. As an adult, he learned the organ sufficiently to accompany his singing of the beloved Dutch psalms.

More importantly, he was a faithful, loving husband and a solid family man.

Preacher/Pastor

Friend and foe alike recognized Rev. Hoeksema as a truly great preacher. His enemies tried to denigrate the reformation of 1924 as merely a matter of people mesmerized by an orator. There was stirring oratory in a deep voice from a commanding presence. There were also penetrating exegesis, excellent homiletics, and solid doctrine. There was also the mysterious unction of the Holy Spirit that alone makes the great preacher.

The power and worth of his preaching are evident in the published volumes of collected sermons, e.g.,When I Survey . . . . sermons on the suffering of Christ.

Hoeksema developed his theology in connection with, through, and for the sake of preaching.

Never would he surrender his pulpit, not even when the synod of the PRC offered him a full-time professorship, so that he could devote more time to study and writing. As far as he himself was concerned, he was not Prof. Hoeksema, but Rev. Hoeksema. All of his lifelong training of men for the ministry in the PR Seminary aimed solely at the production of good preachers for the churches. He had no interest in theological scholarship for its own sake. This emphasis on preaching stemmed from his conviction that the preaching of the gospel is the Word of God. He took seriously the Reformed confession that preaching is the chief means of faith, grace, and salvation. When an ordained man preaches the Word of truth, Christ Himself speaks with His living voice to His church.

In the earlier days of the reformation, before the demands of preaching, writing, teaching, and missions took their toll on his time and energies, he was an active, effective pastor in his congregation of some 500 families.

He was a tireless worker, who poured himself out for his congregation, the churches, and the truth. Gertrude Hoeksema tells of the 20-hour days and the sleepless nights in her fine biography, Therefore Have I Spoken. The ingratitude of many of his congregation and especially of his former students must have cut him to the quick in the cruel days of 1953, although he never said a-word about it in the years of my own seminary training under him, 1960-1963, a mere seven years later.

Theologian

If you ask me what, in our time, our people need above all, in the first place, my answer is: Doctrine! If you ask me what they need in the second place, I say: Doctrine! If you ask me what they need in the third place, I say: Doctrine!

This was Hoeksema’s published conviction already in 1921 when he was still in the CRC.

The necessary doctrine was the Reformed faith as set forth in the Reformed confessions. Central was the sovereignty of the grace of God in the salvation of elect sinners. Hoeksema drew out more clearly than had been done before the implication that grace is particular. Grace both as favor toward men and as actual power working deliverance is intended for and given to the elect alone. Hoeksema, like Paul inEphesians 1 and like Christ in John 10, saw salvation in Christ as founded upon God’s eternal predestination. G.C. Berkouwer has remarked that no one has developed theology consistently with predestination as has Herman Hoeksema.

Hoeksema’s main contribution, however, has been the development of the distinctively Reformed doctrine of the covenant. He explained it as a living relationship of fellowship between God and the church in Christ. Rooted in God’s own triune life, it is the goal of the work of salvation, not merely a means to final bliss. Hoeksema viewed the covenant in the light of the gospel of grace, teaching that God establishes the covenant with Christ and the elect in Him and that the covenant promise is unconditional, not dependent for its realization upon man or his work.

In the turbulent time leading up to the schism of 1953, Hoeksema told the as yet united churches that “the most peculiar treasure of the PRC (is) their peculiar view of the covenant.” Confidently (and accurately), he stated that “he that has been captivated by this beautiful Reformed truth must have nothing of anything that smacks like Heynsian theology, nor will he ever retrogress into a traditional conditional theology.”

As other theologians were the “angelic doctor,” or the “doctor of grace,” Hoeksema was the “doctor of the covenant.”

Within the framework of the confessions, Hoeksema claimed liberty to differ from the Reformed tradition. He corrected the tradition in such doctrines as the image of God in man; the covenant with Adam in Paradise; and marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Theologians express their theology in writing. Hoeksema published, among other works, Reformed Dogmatics, The Triple Knowledge (a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism), Believers and Their Seed, and Behold, He Cometh! (commentary on Revelation). In addition, he wrote many pamphlets and brochures. A veritable treasure-trove of editorials, meditations, and articles fills the first 41 volumes of theStandard Bearer. Much of this remains untranslated in the Dutch language. It is now time for a PR man, working through this mass of material, as well as many unpublished sermons, to make the theology of Herman Hoeksema the subject of a doctoral dissertation. This would benefit the PRC and the rest of the catholic church.

Churchman

On principle, Herman Hoeksema was not a professional theologian, but an ardent churchman. He loved the church. He loved her above all in the PRC, but he loved Christ’s church. He worked in and for the church. He founded, guided, suffered for, and devoted himself to a denomination of churches. As a churchman—a Reformed churchman—he insisted on, and submitted to, the Church Order of Dordt, not only as regards the government of the local church by elders but also as regards the government of the churches by the major assemblies. No independent, he! The result has been a distinctive, workable, beneficent church polity in the PRC, a fine balance of the autonomy of the local congregation and the real authority of the major assemblies.

As he had opportunity, Hoeksema manifested wider interest than only the PRC. His effort at reform in the early 1920s had the welfare of the-CRC in mind. The CRC rejected its reformer. But where would the CRC be today, had it hearkened to Herman Hoeksema? In the 1940s, Hoeksema enthusiastically promoted a conference with the Reformed Church in the U. S. In the late 1930s and again in the late 1940s, Hoeksema extended the hand of fellowship to. Schilder, when other Reformed churches in the United States were at pains to distance themselves from the Dutch theologian and even to ostracize him. In the early 1950s, when some of his colleagues opposed the idea, Hoeksema urged acceptance of the invitation from the Reformed Ecumenical Synod to send observers to Edinburgh, saying that “we ought to rub shoulders with other Reformed men.”

Reformer

Against this background of preacher, theologian, and churchman must the reformer of 1924 be seen.

Christ did not use him to reform a church ravaged by theological modernism, as was the case with Machen, although the consequences of the error of the common grace that Hoeksema fought would be sheer modernism.

Hoeksema purified the church of the destructive heresy of common grace. He did so in two main respects. He condemned the teaching that God is gracious in the preaching of the gospel to all who hear,offering them salvation with the wish that all will be saved. This is the introduction of the Arminian doctrine of preaching into the Reformed churches. Second, he repudiated the teaching that there is a work of grace in the unregenerated, unbelieving world that produces good culture, so that the church may cooperate with the world and allow herself to be influenced by it. Against the first error, Hoeksema asserted that the grace of God in the gospel is particular. Against the second, he posited the biblical truth of the antithesis.

As a reformer, he stood. He was a man of courage.

As a reformer, he suffered. He was hated, cursed, deposed, isolated, betrayed, and, thus, killed. He paid the price.

As a reformer, he is being vindicated, not by men but by God in history. His warnings and prophecies are fulfilled. It becomes more and more difficult to oppose, or even ignore, the truths that he proclaimed.

As a reformer, he ought to be honored for the truth’s sake.

This, we gladly do. For, with many others, we have loved our reformer.

For the truth’s sake.

—DJE