Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century Netherlands examines how Dutch Protestant thinkers and theologicans met the challenges of the rapidly modernizing world around them. It shows that the nineteenth-century saw theology fundamentally transformed and reinvented in a variety of ways. Enlightenment values were fiercely attacked by orthodox Pietists but embraced by 'modern' theologians. Positions were not fixed and theologians has to work hard to maintain their intellectual integrity. Jewish Isaac da Costa converted to Christianity and fulminated against the Zeitgeist. Allard Pierson, who in his youth had been under the spell of Da Costa, resigned from his ministry and adopted an 'agnostic' stance. Abraham Kuyper modernized theology and politics, by laying the foundations of 'pillarization' (the segmented social structures based on differences in religion and worldview) of Dutch society. Abraham Kuenen revolutionized the study of the Old Testament, and Protestant theologians made ground-breaking contributions to the emerging science of religion. This book used in-depth studies of a small number of significant and influential Protestant thinkers to analyse how they addressed specific modern transformation processes such as political modernization, the pluralization of world views, and the emergence of critical historical scholarship. It also considers the significant Dutch contribution to the historical-critical study of the Bible, and the emergence of the modern comparative study of religion.

Abraham Kuyper is known as the energetic Dutch Protestant social activist and public theologian of the 1898 Princeton Stone Lectures, the Lectures on Calvinism. In fact, the church was the point from which Kuyper's concerns for society and public theology radiated. In his own words, ''The problem of the church is none other than the problem of Christianity itself.'' The loss of state support for the church, religious pluralism, rising nationalism, and the populist religious revivals sweeping Europe in the nineteenth century all eroded the church's traditional supports. Dutch Protestantism faced the unprecedented prospect of ''going Dutch''; from now on it would have to pay its own way. John Wood examines how Abraham Kuyper adapted the Dutch church to its modern social context through a new account of the nature of the church and its social position. The central concern of Kuyper's ecclesiology was to re-conceive the relationship between the inner aspects of the church--the faith and commitment of the members--and the external forms of the church, such as doctrinal confessions, sacraments, and the relationship of the church to the Dutch people and state. Kuyper's solution was to make the church less dependent on public entities such as nation and state and more dependent on private support, especially the good will of its members. This ecclesiology de-legitimated the national church and helped Kuyper justify his break with the church, but it had wider effects as well. It precipitated a change in his theology of baptism from a view of the instrumental efficacy of the sacrament to his later doctrine of presumptive regeneration wherein the external sacrament followed, rather than preceded and prepared for, the intenral work grace. This new ecclesiology also gave rise to his well-known public theology; once he achieved the private church he wanted, as the Netherlands' foremost public figure, he had to figure out how to make Christianity public again.

Abraham Kuyper is known as the energetic Dutch Protestant social activist and public theologian of the 1898 Princeton Stone Lectures, the Lectures on Calvinism. In fact, the church was the point from which Kuyper's concerns for society and public theology radiated. In his own words, ''The problem of the church is none other than the problem of Christianity itself.'' The loss of state support for the church, religious pluralism, rising nationalism, and the populist religious revivals sweeping Europe in the nineteenth century all eroded the church's traditional supports. Dutch Protestantism faced the unprecedented prospect of ''going Dutch''; from now on it would have to pay its own way. John Wood examines how Abraham Kuyper adapted the Dutch church to its modern social context through a new account of the nature of the church and its social position. The central concern of Kuyper's ecclesiology was to re-conceive the relationship between the inner aspects of the church—the faith and commitment of the members—and the external forms of the church, such as doctrinal confessions, sacraments, and the relationship of the church to the Dutch people and state. Kuyper's solution was to make the church less dependent on public entities such as nation and state and more dependent on private support, especially the good will of its members. This ecclesiology de-legitimated the national church and helped Kuyper justify his break with the church, but it had wider effects as well. It precipitated a change in his theology of baptism from a view of the instrumental efficacy of the sacrament to his later doctrine of presumptive regeneration wherein the external sacrament followed, rather than preceded and prepared for, the intenral work grace. This new ecclesiology also gave rise to his well-known public theology; once he achieved the private church he wanted, as the Netherlands' foremost public figure, he had to figure out how to make Christianity public again.

Previous editions are cited in Books for College Libraries, 3d ed.Barth (d. 1968, formerly dogmatic theology, U. of Basel, Switzerland) saw this monumental work as incomplete. Yet it offers a substantial treatment of the history of theology and philosophy in German-speaking countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first half of the book is devoted to "background" with major sections on Rousseau, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Novalis, and Hegel. The remainder of the book considers 19th-century Protestant thinkers, beginning with Schleiermacher. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Biblical interpretation and theological speculation are inseparable: each has constantly influenced the other for good or for ill. But which of the two is the final criterion? Though universally the church has given lip-service to the Scriptures as the source and norm of its theology, it has nonetheless allowed its theological commitment to shape and at times distort its principles of biblical interpretation. It has used the Bible more as a support for its dogmas than as a basis for testing and correcting them. This has proven to have been truce in liberal as well as in orthodox circles, and nowhere so clearly as in the Dutch modernist controversy of the late nineteenth century. The present study attempts: (1) to outline the major theological movements in The Netherlands previous to and following the crucial year 1850, bringing this forward to the early years of the present century; (2) to enter into a description and analysis of Dutch biblical criticism during this same period, paying special attention to the interpretation of the Old Testament, where the problems have been the greatest and the influence of Dutch scholars has been the most lasting; (3) to draw from this analysis conclusions regarding the relationship between theology and biblical exegesis that are valid not only for theological scholarship in one land and in one particular period but for the entire ongoing theological endeavor throughout the world. The greatest lesson that emerges from this study is that respect for the integrity of the biblical text is an indispensable prerequisite to genuine and lasting theological progress.

But even among Christian Democrat nations in general, the Netherlands still figures as one of the countries where religion is most likely to excite political emotions, and to be called into the discussion at every stage. To a large extent this is due to the Dutch phenomenon of verzuiling, 'pillarisation' or 'vertical pluralism': a socio-political system in which groups with different ideologies--the Catholics, the Calvinists, the Socialists and the Liberals--lead their separate lives in isolated 'pillars', only coming into contact with each other at the top level, where their leaders confer and compromise among themselves in order to run the nation. The conditions under which this system functioned were being created in the nineteenth century, and the most important force behind it was organised religion. In this way the history of Dutch religion in the nineteenth century can help to explain the 'pillarised' nature of society in the Netherlands for most of the twentieth.