M.Sc. student in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at Utrecht University, specializing in the ethics and the philosophy of biology. E-mail:
This article looks at how neo-Calvinist theologians, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck in particular, dealt with theological problems posed by the First World War. These included, most notably, the question of how to reconcile Christianity with the idea of war, and how to give war meaning in a Christian worldview. Here I will argue that the first of these two questions did not present a problem, as neo-Calvinist orthodoxy had ready answers for it. The second, however, was much more difficult and indeed proved to be intractable. I will argue that some of the hardships the Dutch churches faced during and after the war were due to their failure to formulate a convincing answer for this problem, as their theology required them to defend the idea of war against the pacifists. This failure led to a general belief that the traditional theological answers the churches had to offer no longer sufficed.
‘Spare us, for once please not about the war – we hear the sympathetic reader tell us. This request can be granted, for the literature on the world war is overwhelming’. Thus began the column on economics in the September 1915 issue of the monthly Dutch Christian opinion magazine
This war presents us with a great embarrassment, and we do not know how to give it a place in our reasonable, moral, Christian worldview. Who can show us what the cause of this war is, why it began and what end it will serve? From whatever side one views it, no light can be seen anywhere, as it is shrouded in darkness. It appears that it no longer has a place in our lives, and falls outside the framework of this age.
This problem was not for the Dutch alone to deal with, of course. Throughout Europe, churchmen struggled with it, most notably in the warring nations. In Germany and England – the nations generally most important in defining Dutch debate in this period – the powerful state churches were immediately mobilized to bless the war effort of the home nation and condemn that of its foes.
Owing to a virtual absence of studies on Dutch wartime theology, it is much less clear how men of the Church in the Netherlands dealt with the ‘embarrassment’ identified by Bavinck. In the years since Hans Krabbendam pointed to this problem (in 2002), the situation has improved, but only a little.
I will draw rather heavily on the studies by Enne Koops on war sermons, and by Dirk van Keulen on a number of war-related essays written by Bavinck between 1914 and 1919.
Modern culture presented people with science, technology, increased well-being and wealth, but also brought along changes in religiosity and morality that were not universally judged to be positive (to put it mildly). It was a task for many theologians to strike a balance between those sides of modernity.
Abraham Kuyper was born in 1837 in the town of Maassluis, where his father preached a mild, sober Protestantism as a clergyman of the Reformed Church. During his university years and early career as a clergyman, the young Kuyper gradually became disillusioned with his father’s faith and rejected this approach to Christianity in favour of a much stricter Calvinism. The modern protestant faith as preached in the NHK, with its liberal approach to science and the Bible and its reconciliatory stance towards modern social developments, was much too similar to godless philosophies for Kuyper. Johannes Henricus Scholten (1811–1885), for instance, had become one of the founders of the ‘modern’ school in Dutch theology by incorporating the views of the German philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) on spiritual progress into Protestant theology, denying the significance of miracles and interpreting revelation as an ongoing process rather than a singular event recorded in the Bible. The Reformed Church, Kuyper felt, was weak, and incapable of dealing with the social and religious problems of the time.
Calvinism gave Kuyper a way of approaching these problems, and his long life can be seen as an integrated attempt at realizing his vision of a proper, Christian society. The NHK was in moral decline, as was much of the rest of society, which ended up on the wrong side of Kuyper’s famous ‘antithesis’ between those who live in Christ and those who live without him.
Kuyper was remarkably effective in organizing his neo-Calvinist society. In 1872, he became editor of a daily newspaper,
Bavinck was less fond of operating in the spotlight, and as a theologian he was much more nuanced in his views and less confrontational in style than Kuyper. Nonetheless, he played no less an essential role for the GKN, and he figured prominently in defining the basic principles of the neo-Calvinist faith.
The essence of this neo-Calvinist theology can be found in its attempt to strike a balance between modernity and orthodoxy, without doing harm to either. The anti-religious (and anti-authoritarian)
None of this would imply a denial of modernity, however, and both Kuyper and Bavinck happily incorporated modern science and scholarship into their views, only with a restored Christian foundation. The facts established by the natural sciences, for instance, had to be divorced from pagan ideologies (such as evolution and pantheism) and placed onto a Biblical foundation.
This short (and grossly oversimplified) history of the GKN will serve as an introduction for what is to come. The world dominated by Kuyper and Bavinck was well organized and structured, both institutionally and in terms of ideas.
Can wars be just? This seems to be an essential question for any moral system, especially in wartime. Van Keulen expresses surprise, therefore, at his observation that theologians of the GKN seemed insufficiently occupied with it. He writes, ‘As far as I know, the only theologian of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands who, during the First World War, has reflected explicitly on the fundamental question of whether war can be united with the Christian faith, is Herman Bavinck’.
While the question of war and justice had kept believers (and non-believers alike) busy for many a century, it had been rather high on the agenda in the early years of the twentieth century due to the rise of such phenomena as the international peace-movement. Supporters of this movement (often but not always socialists) tended to see war as a barbaric activity that modern, civilized humanity had to outgrow.
One version of the ‘neo-Calvinist view of war’ can be found in a speech given before the lower house of parliament by Jhr. Alexander Frederik de Savornin Lohman (1837–1924), a politician and law professor who, despite many a conflict with Kuyper, remained loyal to the GKN and its neo-Calvinist ideology.
In his 1914-essay in
whoever experiences such miseries can hardly reach any other conclusion than that war clashes with God’s will [...] Conversely, the justice, necessity and utility of war has found powerful supporters in men such as Hegel, Cousin and Spencer. [...] Christianity can be reconciled with neither sentiment.
In a 1919 essay, Bavinck goes on to list a number of rules for a just war – it must be fought by a just government, for a just cause, with a pure intention and by just means – and he places himself in the tradition of Ambrosius, Agustine, Aquinas, Calvin, etc.
Kuyper, too, rejects any form of pacifism, and does so in much stronger terms than Bavinck, even though the arguments are again very similar. Whereas Bavinck hastens to point out that his view of the New Testament as it relates to the question of war and justice is rather controversial, Kuyper simply states that the Bible forbids pacifism. World peace will only be established
It is not hard to find Christians who disagreed with this once one moves outside orthodox circles. Bart de Ligt (1883–1938), theologian and clergyman of the Reformed Church, was an avowed pacifist and anti-militarist, and never refrained from spreading his anti-militaristic views, whether from the pulpit or as leading political voice in the small (but vocal) ‘Bond van Christen-Socialisten’ (Christian Socialist Union).
This may not have been entirely fair of de Ligt. People such as Kuyper and de Savornin Lohman had indeed argued for a powerful Dutch army, but their logic has been consistent with non-aggressive policy. Wars will happen no matter what we do, they would argue. So we had better make sure that we were capable of defending ourselves.
‘A disaster resulting from human sin’ appears to be the consensus view of the First World War among Dutch theologians, and it is difficult to find even a single Dutch author willing to defend the war as just. This is not the case in the warring nations, for obvious reasons. In England and Germany, for instance, the clergy often took the side of their country and defended its involvement in the conflict as just, condemning the war effort of the other side as evidently unjust. So the Germans liked to portray their own
The Dutch tended not to buy into this. During the months following the outbreak of the war, the columnists in
Challenges to Christian authority had come in various guises during the nineteenth century, a period that can be characterized in terms of the emancipation of a vocal middle class and the rise of the liberal nation state, bringing with it a plethora of political, philosophical and religious innovations.
Most importantly for the neo-Calvinists, all these developments resulted in ultimate authority being placed in the hands of man. Europe had thus sought to ground authority in human society and discourse, rather than submitting itself to God’s Word and judgement. International law, so essential for the maintenance of peace, was outvoted time and again by feelings of nationalism. The war was the result of arrogance and the idea that ‘power begets justice’.
This does not mean that no one picked a side. Kuyper, for instance, made no secret of his preference for a German victory, but his position was chiefly pragmatic, as he believed that the Dutch cultural and economic ties with Germany meant that the Netherlands would benefit more from a dominant position for Germany than one for Britain. Moreover, Kuyper had long felt that Britain, as an aggressively colonial naval power, posed a significant threat to the Dutch overseas territories. The British had indeed reinforced this belief in 1899–1902 by annexing two former Dutch colonies in what is now South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War. This episode had greatly troubled Kuyper when he had been prime minister on behalf of the ARP.
In short, the general question of justice and the war was not a particularly difficult one for the GKN. Wars could be just, as they had been arguing for years, but this war was not, as it was caused by the same ideas and mentality that neo-Calvinism had been constructed to resist. The really difficult question, as Bavinck posed it in his 1914 essay (quoted above), was ‘how to give it a place in our reasonable, moral, Christian worldview’, for it seemed ‘that it no longer fits in our life, and falls outside the framework of this age’.
World War I may be said to have involved four Christian ‘emperors’.
Alexander W.F. Idenburg (1861–1935), close friend and ARP-colleague of Kuyper, and Governor-General of the Dutch East-Indies, commented on the sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania by a German submarine, by writing that this was indeed a terrible thing, but no more terrible than the systematic starving of the German people by the British naval blockade.
It was difficult to make sense of such an unusually terrible war, but the idea that the war could function in somehow cleansing society of its ills was occasionally used to give meaning to it. The seed of this thought was expressed by Kuyper, who was in Germany when the Kaiser declared war on the French. Due to the chaos of mobilization it took him no less than four days to return home, and still in shock a few weeks later, he wrote to Idenburg:
Everything here feels as though struck by God’s own hand [...] Stress governs our lives. All are disturbed and terrified. Economically and financially too, many have perished. [...] I do not know how to get through this. And yet all this is wonderful. It is so healthy. Everything was corrupted. Now comes the great operation, and then follows the cleansing. God comes to rid us of our own social degeneration in the most terrible way. I can be grateful, but the struggle will be immense.
But Kuyper never further developed this notion of cleansing, and at any rate it was far less common among theologians in the Netherlands than in (say) England, where the Anglican Church felt that its direct involvement in the war effort through war chaplains and public opinion making gave it a real chance at regaining some of the socio-cultural influence it had lost in the decades before.
It was in fact much more common to look at the terrors of the war, in combination with the social ills brought on by modern society, as signs of the immanent end-times and the Second Coming of Christ. Such ‘eschatological’ themes were a broad European phenomenon from the beginning of the twentieth century, with the general pessimism of the
I hope that you will not exist for another 25 years. I would find it much greater if, before we get to another 25 years, the end of the world would have come [...] This question is all the more relevant since our Saviour predicted that wars and rumours of wars would precede the end and bring us to the end. [...] Oh, let it be your prayer: ‘Come, Lord Jesus, yes come swiftly’.
Bavinck shared Kuyper’s despair about the state the world was in, but was less willing to talk of the end times. By 1919, however, he did seem to have found at least some solace in the belief that, in some sense, this is how it was supposed to be:
The limited influence had by Christianity on the diminution of war is, for its members, a cause for shame and sadness, but it can hardly be very disappointing given the condition the world and humanity are in according to the Bible, due to their sinful nature. [...] Without a doubt, God is capable of leading to good end what humanity has made for evil. This remains a consolation amidst the greatest suffering.
I take this to be Bavinck’s solution to the ‘problem of the war’ he posed in 1914 (as quoted in the introduction to this paper) – and a seemingly unsatisfactory one at that. It was not the question of war and justice (the neo-Calvinist tradition had a clear answer to that), or that of the cause of
When the war had finally come to an end, it was time for the churches to lick their wounds and think about what to do next. Apart from a handful of positive effects, such as the spectacular progress made in aviation and other technologies, not much good could be said about the beginning, middle, or end of the war, Bavinck wrote.
In general, Kuyper and Bavinck were rather pessimistic about the future of their church, much more so than they had been before the war. On 27 October 1917, in an article in the newspaper
Not everybody shared their pessimism. Orthodox Reformed theologian Slotemaker de Bruïne had written a book back in 1910 entitled,
It is worth noting that this religious belief usually has a general character and contains very little that is Christian; guilt and a desire for salvation are rarely heard of; the religion is often vague and superficial. [...] And while the war persisted, the religious awareness weakened and was in many cases even replaced by apathy, doubt and unbelief. Due to this war and its many woes, thousands upon thousands have fallen into scepticism, materialism and atheism, for how could so much suffering be made consistent with the love of an all-powerful Providence?
It is true that the great majority of the population is still counted as belonging to a Christian Church community. In 1909, only 290,960 people did
Kuyper and Bavinck were quite right in their perception that any rise in religiosity during the war certainly had not favoured the traditional churches – it was spiritualist movements and new religious sects that were flourishing due to the conflict.
A significant part of the hardships the GKN endured during and after the First World War, and its failure to act in any way so as to convince people that they were doing everything they could against it, were no doubt caused by the material and personal shortages it had to endure, as shown by Koops.
In itself this argument is evidently one-sided and superficial. It must be said once more: God’s love, however blissful for His children, is not sentimentality, not weakness, that prevents wrath and counteracts judgement, that brushes justice aside and leaves the assailing of God’s holiness unpunished. Whoever believes this does not live from the Holy Scripture, but from personally wrought conceptions. [...] We do not glorify war, but we accept it as a judgement of God. We do not explain away all the horrors that take place, but they make us shudder – also because they give us a vision of the depth of sin. With all our strength we wish to support everything that can contribute to the reduction of war and let not brute force but holy justice rule on earth.
Kuyper and Bavinck had tried to renew Calvinism and had defined their theological and cultural views in response to specific problems posed by the nineteenth century. The neo-Calvinist world had an integrated character, with many theologians holding University positions as well as political or church positions, and not rarely a combination of those (as with Kuyper and Bavinck). But their theology could not adequately deal with the First World War, and it was now up to a new generation of neo-Calvinist theologians to reformulate orthodoxy in response to the problems posed by the twentieth century. Kuyper and Bavinck were not forgotten, and the youth of the GKN still drew inspiration from their work.
P.A. Diepenhorst, ‘Economische kroniek’,
I.M. Tames, ‘
H. Bavinck, ‘Het probleem van den oorlog’,
See P.J. Molenaar, ‘Nederlandsche sympathieën en antipathieën inzake den oorlog’,
Many studies have looked into this episode. For a fairly general overview, see: A. Gregory & A. Becker, ‘Religious sites and practices’, in: J. Winter & J.-L. Roberts (eds.),
H. [= J.L.] Krabbendam, ‘Uit de schaduw. Opleving van de Eerste Wereldoorlog’,
E. Koops, ‘Een conflict van strijdige levenswijzen. De gereformeerde prediking en de moderne cultuur (1911–1918). De gereformeerde prediking en de moderne cultuur (1911–1918)’, in: M. de Keizer & M. Tates, ed.,
As opposed to the larger Dutch Reformed Church (‘Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk’ – NHK), from which it sprang. These names can be somewhat confusing, so I will refer to the ‘Hervormde Kerk’ as ‘NHK’ or ‘Reformed Church’ and its members as ‘Reformed’. To the ‘Gereformeerde Kerk’ I will refer as ‘GKN’ and its members as ‘neo-Calvinist’.
M.E. Brinkman & C. van der Kooi (ed.),
Koops, ‘Een cultuurhistorische zondvloed’ (n. 7) 53–54; M. de Keizer, ‘Inleiding’, in: M. de Keizer & M. Tates (eds.),
Tames,
J. Koch,
A.W. van Wilgenburg,
Brinkman & Van der Kooi,
H. Colijn (ed.),
The peak of which would come when Kuyper became Prime Minister from 1901–1905. See: Koch,
J. Veenhof, ‘De God van de filosofen en de God van de Bijbel. Herman Bavinck en de wijsbegeerte’, in: G. Harinck & G. Neven (eds.),
H. Bavinck,
See for instance Kuyper,
See for instance A. Kuyper,
C.B. Hylkema,
This discussion goes beyond the scope of this paper. See H. Bavinck,
Koch,
Koops, ‘Een cultuurhistorische zondvloed’ (n. 7) 54–58. On 13 July 1914 Kuyper wrote a Driestar in
Van Keulen, ‘Wij zitten met dezen oorlog in groote verlegenheid’ (n. 7) 186: ‘De enige theoloog uit de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland die – voor zover ik weet – ten tijde van de Eerste Wereldoorlog uitdrukkelijk heeft nagedacht over de principiële vraag of het voeren van oorlog verenigbaar is met het christelijk geloof, is Herman Bavinck’.
H. Noordegraaf,
Koch,
A.F. de Savornin Lohman, ‘Oorlog en Recht’, [speech given on 8 January 1900], reprinted in: A.F. de Savornin Lohman,
M. Beversluis,
Bavinck, ‘Het probleem van den oorlog (n. 3) 9: ‘Wie onder den indruk van deze ellenden leeft, kan haast tot geen ander oordeel komen, dan dat de oorlog in strijd is met Gods wil [...] Daartegenover vond het recht, de noodzakelijkheid en de nuttigheid van den oorlog krachtige voorspraak bij mannen als Hegel, Cousin en Spencer [...] Met het Christendom laat zich geen van beide gevoelens in overeenstemming brengen’.
H. Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’,
A. Kuyper, ‘Schoone utopie’, in: Colijn,
Noordegraaf,
B. de Ligt,
B. de Ligt,
See A. Kuyper, ‘‘s Lands defensie’, in: Colijn,
J.R. Slotemaker de Bruïne, ‘Het probleem der weerloosheid’,
J.D.J. Aengenent,
Gregory & Becker, ‘Religious sites and practices’ (n. 5); P. Porter, ‘Beyond comfort: German and English military chaplains and the memory of the Great War, 1919–1929’,
P.A. Diepenhorst, ‘De Oorlog. Nog maar één antwoord’,
D. MacCulloch,
Van Wilgenburg,
Kuyper, ‘Macht boven recht’ (n. 26); Kuyper,
B. Wielenga, ‘Het militarisme van Nietzsche’,
H. Bavinck, ‘Ethiek en politiek’,
Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond (n. 33). See also Koops, ‘Een cultuurhistorische zondvloed’ (n. 7) 58–61, for a general treatment of criticism in the GKN.
C. A. J. van Koppen,
Tames, ‘War on our Minds’ (n. 4). Schouten expressed this sentiment in a 1916 article: ‘Neutraliteit’,
Bavinck, ‘Het probleem van den oorlog’ (n. 3) 1.
Those of Germany, Austria, Russia, and England. See MacCulloch,
De Ligt,
B. de Ligt, ‘De schuld der kerken’,
Koops, ‘Een cultuurhistorische zondvloed’ (n. 7) 60–61. I have not encountered such statements among the neo-Calvinist theologians studied here, however.
A.W.F. Idenburg, ‘Letter to Pleyte, June 10 1915’, in: J. de Bruijn & G. Puchinger, ed.,
Idenburg, ‘Letter to Kuyper, Nov. 30 1914’, in: De Bruijn & Puchinger, 479.
A. Kuyper, ‘Letter to Idenburg, Aug. 19 1914’, in: De Bruijn & Puchinger, 468: ‘Alles voelt zich hier als door een slag van Gods eigen hand neergeploft [...] De zenuwen jagen het leven. Alles is ontsteld en verschrikt. Ook oeconomisch en financieel gaat meer dan één te gronde. Ik weet niet hoe er door te komen. En toch is dit alles heerlijk. Het is zoo gezond. Alles was veretterd. Nu komt de geweldige operatie. En dan eerst kan de zuivering volgen. God komt ons te hulp om ons op de schrikkelijkste manier van ons eigen sociaal bederf te verlossen. Ik kan er voor danken. Maar ontzaglijk zal de worsteling zijn’. See also Koch,
S.T. Bontrager, ‘The imagined crusade: the Church of England and the mythology of nationalism and Christianity during the Great War’,
O.J. de Jong,
A. Kuyper, ‘Christelijke Staat’, in Colijn,
Bavinck, ‘Het probleem van den oorlog’ (n. 3) 24; Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’ (n. 33). Flirtations with this idea at the beginning of the war could be found among other denominations as well, as in the Roman Catholic Aengenent mentioned above (see n. 40). Nearer the end of the war, this idea appears to have become much less common.
J. Winter,
Wielenga, ‘Het militarisme van Nietzsche’ (n. 41);
A. Kuyper, ‘Toespraak, uitgesproken op 24 nov. 1915, ter gelegenheid van het 25-jarig bestaan der J.-V. op G. G. “De Zaaier” te Kralingen’, in: J.C. Rullmann (ed.),
Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’ (n. 33) 10, 35: ‘De geringe invloed van het Christendom op de beperking van de oorlog is een oorzaak van schaamte en droevenis, maar kan niet al te teleurstellend zijn, lettend op de toestand waarin de wereld en mensheid vanwege hun zondige aard verkeren. [...] Zonder twijfel, God is machtig, om wat menschen ten kwade hebben gedacht, ten goede te leiden. Dat blijft een troost te midden der grootste smarten’.
Bavinck, ‘Het probleem van den oorlog’ (n. 3).
Ibidem.
Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’ (n. 33).
See, for instance, A.W. Bronsveld, ‘Kroniek’,
A. Kuyper, ‘De Gedenkdag der Hervorming’, in: J.C. Rullmann (ed.),
Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’ (n. 33) 30.
J.R. Slotemaker de Bruïne,
J.R. Slotemaker de Bruïne, ‘Religie en socialisme’,
J.R. Slotemaker de Bruïne,
Bavinck, ‘Christendom, Oorlog, Volkenbond’, (n. 33) 30–31: ‘Maar opmerkelijk is daarbij, dat dit godsdienstig geloof zeer dikwerf een algemeen karakter blijft dragen en weinig Christelijks bevat; schuldbesef en behoefte aan verlossing komen er betrekkelijk zelden in aan het woord; de religie is dikwerf vaag en oppervlakkig. [...] En naarmate de oorlog langer aanhield, verzwakte het religieuze besef, en maakte bij velen zelfs voor onverschilligheid, twijfel en ongeloof plaats. Duizenden bij duizenden zijn door dezen oorlog en zijne menigerlei ellenden tot scepticisme, materialisme en atheïsme vervallen, want hoe was zoveel wereldleed te rijmen met de liefde eener almachtige Voorzienigheid?’
Kuyper, ‘Christelijke Staat’ (n. 61) 123–124 ‘Het is zoo, het overgroote deel der bevolking wordt nog steeds gerekend tot een Christelijk Kerkgenootschap te behooren. Tot
See I. Kloosterman, this issue.
G. Harinck & L. Winkeler, ‘De twintigste eeuw’, in: H.J. Selderhuis (ed.),
G. Harinck, ‘Op losse schroeven. Gereformeerden en de moderniteit’, in: M. de Keizer & S. Tates (eds.),
G. Harinck & L. Winkeler, ‘De Twintigste Eeuw’, in: H.J. Selderhuis (ed.),
Van Wilgenburg,
Koops, ‘Een cultuurhistorische zondvloed’ (n. 7).
A.W.F. Idenburg, ‘Ons standpunt inzake oorlog’,
Harinck, ‘Op losse schroeven’ (n. 80) 346–351.
Herman Bavinck (1854–1921).
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920).