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The Klaas Schilder Reader: The Essential Theological Writings
"Klaas Schilder (1890-1952) was a prominent Dutch Reformed theologian in the early twentieth century, first as a pastor and then as a professor. While his fame spread to North America in the 1940s, he is mostly forgotten today. In Schilder The Essential Theological Writings, readers will rediscover this important Dutch theologian"--
- GenresTheology
806 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2022
Phenomenal read. This has undoubtedly piqued my interest in reading more of this man.
Writing on a wide range of topics, Schilder embodies the kind of theologian we need today. Thoroughly Orthodox and familiar with his tradition, yet bold enough to step outside it and critique it with his unflinching, apocalyptic-like writing.
While hinted at during the introduction, it still seems strange to me that he was so intent on the unity of the church while personally involved in so much divisive polemic. I'm not sure how he reconciled that in his lifetime.
Beautifully translated work essays that show Schilder was a beautifully imaginative thinker and writer. A gift to the church. Everyone ought to read at least some of his works.
Writing on a wide range of topics, Schilder embodies the kind of theologian we need today. Thoroughly Orthodox and familiar with his tradition, yet bold enough to step outside it and critique it with his unflinching, apocalyptic-like writing.
While hinted at during the introduction, it still seems strange to me that he was so intent on the unity of the church while personally involved in so much divisive polemic. I'm not sure how he reconciled that in his lifetime.
Beautifully translated work essays that show Schilder was a beautifully imaginative thinker and writer. A gift to the church. Everyone ought to read at least some of his works.
July 12, 2024
Prologue:
Growing up in the Canadian Reformed Church with my dad as an Old Testament professor at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, I was influenced by a lot of Schilder second hand. My Dad's first language is Dutch, which gives him access to Schilder's corpus that 2nd/3rd generation Dutch people of my sort don't have. My great-grandfather Jules Van Popta, the first Canadian Reformed minister, was an ardent disciple of Schilder. To me, it was as if Schilder had left an apparition behind when he went up in glory. I heard his name often enough and knew vaguely of his impact on the Dutch Reformed tradition without having read any of his work.
This book is a work of love on behalf of the translators and editors, and having read it, I wrote this review below. I have less patience and a quicker temper than my dad and so I sent my review to him, asking for a critique. His response was a very measured and well-written rebuttal of some of the harder edges of my review and I wondered for a while whether I should revise my review. I came to the conclusion that, instead of revising my review, I should post the two together. I think that recapturing the spirit of Schilder’s writings in both it’s historical context and present-day context is best uncovered in multi-generational conversations like these.
My Review:
In reading the Schilder Reader, I oscillated between deep appreciation and deep annoyance at his writing. In this review, I hope to clarify my mostly positive ambivalence towards Schilder, both to myself, and to the reader of this review - whether he/she found Schilder completely satisfactory, or found similar irksome qualities in his writing as I did.
I tend to be a very propositional person. I think in words and concepts. Schilder has the gift of bringing images before my eyes in his words. I love his arcane, journalistic, and bombastic approach to theology. I love the fact that it doesn't contain what I perceive to be the oppressive triumphalism of some of his neo-Calvinistic predecessors. He does not ignore; indeed, he doesn't let anyone else ignore, the difficulties in the church and in Reformed theology and he forces his reader to contend with them. I was transported a century back to the Netherlands when I was reading his writing and it felt half-foreign and half-at-home.
The truth is, I am generally inclined to his opinion. However, part-and-parcel to his bombastic and journalistic method, he did not present his opponents as clearly and as fairly as he should have. A clever writer, he often became too clever for his own good and tried to outwit his opponents rather than carefully showing why his position was more reasonable and true. I often felt confused as to whose ideas he was actually fighting. The writing of such authors can often devolve into a rhetorical slam against one's opponents, albeit Schilder's writing devolves more artfully than others. I understand that I am not of Schilder's time and that I may have missed out on some key context. The editor's introductions were a useful aid and my dad (a Canadian Reformed Old Testament professor) often helped provide context where I was missing it, but I still found Schilder's rhetoric to be a smokescreen rather than a poignant and illuminating light.
Schilder brought me to the heights of Biblical insight in his sermons, his writings on church and covenant, and wartime journalism. His sermon on judgment beginning in the house of the Lord has given me a fuller view of how God's justice, wrath, and love come together. I owe an incalculable debt to his writing in these areas and I suspect I will use some of these writings as sources for my own ideas. On the other hand, I found his writings on Barth to be obscuring and barely readable. I have always been disinclined to Barth's ideas on paradox but I found myself rebelliously curious when Schilder attacked his opponents’ position without stating it fairly and clearly.
I was asked by a friend to summarize Schilder's writing style in one sentence and I told him: He has the cleverness, brilliance, and insight of CS Lewis with none of the humility.
His best moments give my thought flight to the heavens, but his worst moments remind me of all the worst qualities of myself and my theology/philosophy friends - an implicit belief in the superiority and luminosity of my (and when we're in a group - our) beliefs against the beliefs of other traditions. It's good to believe the truth of your own belief, but it's not good to act in superiority if the belief is in the process of being tested against another. It's gentlemanly to treat one's own belief of equal dispute to your opponent's belief until you or your opponent's argument appears more cogent and accurate than the other's. This gentlemanly virtue is painfully lacking in Schilder's writing and is what makes my opinion of Schilder's writing ambivalent while still remaining mostly positive.
If I were rating the work of Albert Oosterhoff, Albert Gootjes, and Marinus De Jong in editing and translating this collection, I would immediately give it 5 stars. They did a splendid job of preserving Schilder's arcane and picturesque style while translating any dutchisms into understandable English. I'm so thankful for their work and I really hope that this effort is continued by them or others to continue translating the rest of Schilder's work into English.
My Dad's "Rebuttal":
Hey Joel,
Thanks for sharing this with me. Your review is lively, personal, and interesting to read, and I enjoyed it very much. Great that you take the time to articulate your perspectives while the book is still fresh in your mind, since this helps to solidify the book and its ideas in your own mind. You've read more of the Schilder Reader than I have, so my reaction is tentative.
Re. Schilder on Barth, two things to consider: 1. KS wrote his dissertation on Barth, and a dissertation topic is generally an area where you deal with complexities, which might account for some of the opacity; 2. Barth was current and well known when KS was writing on him, so he probably didn't feel he needed to state Barth's own ideas before critiquing them. Still, your impression is probably fair in the sense that you express how it comes across today—Barth is probably more passé now than he was then.
Re. Schilder's humility, or lack thereof, you can, of course, only go by his writing style. Perhaps it's in part a byproduct of the genre of polemic. Nowadays it's more common for authors with different perspectives to write collaborative volumes (e.g., Four Views on Hell; Five Views on Baptism, Six Views on Origins, you get the picture), but back then, people wrote articles, or books, against opponents. Thus, Schilder had his own church paper (De Reformatie) in which he interacted with what opponents wrote in their church papers. I remember when Clarion used to be a lot more heated as well. My old minister, Rev van Oene, used to write a column called News Medley, in which he "meddled with" and critiqued what he read in other churches' bulletins. Nowadays we're much nicer to each other. So maybe it's partly a generational thing. The wartime generation didn't mince words. Reminds me of the Reformers: Calvin and Luther could be pretty nasty, but that doesn't mean they weren't humble people. It's just that they were in fighting mode, strongly opposing what they viewed as real dangers to the church. Not sure if that helps, but maybe it gives perspective?
Excellent work, Joel; my critiques are minor; take them or leave them.
Love you, son!
Growing up in the Canadian Reformed Church with my dad as an Old Testament professor at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, I was influenced by a lot of Schilder second hand. My Dad's first language is Dutch, which gives him access to Schilder's corpus that 2nd/3rd generation Dutch people of my sort don't have. My great-grandfather Jules Van Popta, the first Canadian Reformed minister, was an ardent disciple of Schilder. To me, it was as if Schilder had left an apparition behind when he went up in glory. I heard his name often enough and knew vaguely of his impact on the Dutch Reformed tradition without having read any of his work.
This book is a work of love on behalf of the translators and editors, and having read it, I wrote this review below. I have less patience and a quicker temper than my dad and so I sent my review to him, asking for a critique. His response was a very measured and well-written rebuttal of some of the harder edges of my review and I wondered for a while whether I should revise my review. I came to the conclusion that, instead of revising my review, I should post the two together. I think that recapturing the spirit of Schilder’s writings in both it’s historical context and present-day context is best uncovered in multi-generational conversations like these.
My Review:
In reading the Schilder Reader, I oscillated between deep appreciation and deep annoyance at his writing. In this review, I hope to clarify my mostly positive ambivalence towards Schilder, both to myself, and to the reader of this review - whether he/she found Schilder completely satisfactory, or found similar irksome qualities in his writing as I did.
I tend to be a very propositional person. I think in words and concepts. Schilder has the gift of bringing images before my eyes in his words. I love his arcane, journalistic, and bombastic approach to theology. I love the fact that it doesn't contain what I perceive to be the oppressive triumphalism of some of his neo-Calvinistic predecessors. He does not ignore; indeed, he doesn't let anyone else ignore, the difficulties in the church and in Reformed theology and he forces his reader to contend with them. I was transported a century back to the Netherlands when I was reading his writing and it felt half-foreign and half-at-home.
The truth is, I am generally inclined to his opinion. However, part-and-parcel to his bombastic and journalistic method, he did not present his opponents as clearly and as fairly as he should have. A clever writer, he often became too clever for his own good and tried to outwit his opponents rather than carefully showing why his position was more reasonable and true. I often felt confused as to whose ideas he was actually fighting. The writing of such authors can often devolve into a rhetorical slam against one's opponents, albeit Schilder's writing devolves more artfully than others. I understand that I am not of Schilder's time and that I may have missed out on some key context. The editor's introductions were a useful aid and my dad (a Canadian Reformed Old Testament professor) often helped provide context where I was missing it, but I still found Schilder's rhetoric to be a smokescreen rather than a poignant and illuminating light.
Schilder brought me to the heights of Biblical insight in his sermons, his writings on church and covenant, and wartime journalism. His sermon on judgment beginning in the house of the Lord has given me a fuller view of how God's justice, wrath, and love come together. I owe an incalculable debt to his writing in these areas and I suspect I will use some of these writings as sources for my own ideas. On the other hand, I found his writings on Barth to be obscuring and barely readable. I have always been disinclined to Barth's ideas on paradox but I found myself rebelliously curious when Schilder attacked his opponents’ position without stating it fairly and clearly.
I was asked by a friend to summarize Schilder's writing style in one sentence and I told him: He has the cleverness, brilliance, and insight of CS Lewis with none of the humility.
His best moments give my thought flight to the heavens, but his worst moments remind me of all the worst qualities of myself and my theology/philosophy friends - an implicit belief in the superiority and luminosity of my (and when we're in a group - our) beliefs against the beliefs of other traditions. It's good to believe the truth of your own belief, but it's not good to act in superiority if the belief is in the process of being tested against another. It's gentlemanly to treat one's own belief of equal dispute to your opponent's belief until you or your opponent's argument appears more cogent and accurate than the other's. This gentlemanly virtue is painfully lacking in Schilder's writing and is what makes my opinion of Schilder's writing ambivalent while still remaining mostly positive.
If I were rating the work of Albert Oosterhoff, Albert Gootjes, and Marinus De Jong in editing and translating this collection, I would immediately give it 5 stars. They did a splendid job of preserving Schilder's arcane and picturesque style while translating any dutchisms into understandable English. I'm so thankful for their work and I really hope that this effort is continued by them or others to continue translating the rest of Schilder's work into English.
My Dad's "Rebuttal":
Hey Joel,
Thanks for sharing this with me. Your review is lively, personal, and interesting to read, and I enjoyed it very much. Great that you take the time to articulate your perspectives while the book is still fresh in your mind, since this helps to solidify the book and its ideas in your own mind. You've read more of the Schilder Reader than I have, so my reaction is tentative.
Re. Schilder on Barth, two things to consider: 1. KS wrote his dissertation on Barth, and a dissertation topic is generally an area where you deal with complexities, which might account for some of the opacity; 2. Barth was current and well known when KS was writing on him, so he probably didn't feel he needed to state Barth's own ideas before critiquing them. Still, your impression is probably fair in the sense that you express how it comes across today—Barth is probably more passé now than he was then.
Re. Schilder's humility, or lack thereof, you can, of course, only go by his writing style. Perhaps it's in part a byproduct of the genre of polemic. Nowadays it's more common for authors with different perspectives to write collaborative volumes (e.g., Four Views on Hell; Five Views on Baptism, Six Views on Origins, you get the picture), but back then, people wrote articles, or books, against opponents. Thus, Schilder had his own church paper (De Reformatie) in which he interacted with what opponents wrote in their church papers. I remember when Clarion used to be a lot more heated as well. My old minister, Rev van Oene, used to write a column called News Medley, in which he "meddled with" and critiqued what he read in other churches' bulletins. Nowadays we're much nicer to each other. So maybe it's partly a generational thing. The wartime generation didn't mince words. Reminds me of the Reformers: Calvin and Luther could be pretty nasty, but that doesn't mean they weren't humble people. It's just that they were in fighting mode, strongly opposing what they viewed as real dangers to the church. Not sure if that helps, but maybe it gives perspective?
Excellent work, Joel; my critiques are minor; take them or leave them.
Love you, son!
April 20, 2023
By publishing this collection of essays from the eminent Dutch, Neo-Calvinist (a la Abraham Kuyper), Lexham has done us a great service. Schilder writes with boldness and confidence in the face of various historical and theological issues (or, rather, theological formulations he took issue with). Here, we see a thinker who, while building on the significant thinker, Abraham Kuyper, Schilder was not afraid to depart from him most notably regarding the concept of 'common grace,' Kuyper's articulation of the pluriformity of the church, the prioritization of organism over institution in ecclesiology and the visible/invisible church distinction. Also, like other Dutch Reformed theologians of his day, he made sure to interact with the growing influence of Karl Barth. In large part, these essays have a polemical tone. They give us a glimpse into how a formidable theologian was interacting with the issues of his day. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in modern theology, issues surrounding ecclesiology and culture.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews