Wes has some helpful source material on this topic. He begins with a survey on my chapter on the distinction between theology as God knows it (theologia archetypa) and theology as it is revealed to us (theologia ectypa). In the second half of the post, however, he provides a summary of some passages from Klaas Schilder on the same topic. You can see there, as well as in my chapter in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine, that Schilder’s rejection of this essential Reformed distinction is part of a pattern in 20th-century Reformed theology.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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I hope you don’t mind bringing this up after 8 years. I wrote an article for the ‘journal’ of the student association at the theological university in Kampen on the categorical distinction in Schilder’s theology. I’m a student in a ‘Schilderite’ denomination and followed your trail in Recovering the Reformed confession and The Pattern of Sound Doctrine. Alas, I couldn’t find the article of Wes Bredenhof. I was curious about your thoughts on two notions I discovered while comparing Schilder with the Reformed tradition:
1. The influence of Bernhardinus de Moor on Schilder concerning the categorical distinction. Schilder adopts his reconfiguration of the categorical distinction which expends this pattern beyond the 20th century. I haven’t checked yet how Johannes á Marck is processed bu De Moor.
2. More unknown perhaps is Dutch theologian Cornelis Steenblok (1894 – 1966), important man the split which formed the Reformed Congregations in the Netherlands in 1953. He was trained at the Free University. He had the traditional categorical distinction, but came at a similar position on the well-meant offer of the gospel as Herman Hoeksema. As I can see, he is the exact opposite of Schilder. Educated at the Free University, promoted under a staunch Kuyperian, Valentijn Hepp (1879 – 1950), expert on reformed scholasticism, especially Voetius.
Maybe it is to detailled in specifically Dutch church history.
Andreas,
Thank you for this. It’s fascinating!
1. Given Schilder’s rhetoric about “scholasticism,” I’m quite surprised to learn that Schilder was reading De Moor. “Influence” is a slippery word in intellectual history. What sort influence do you see? I’m guessing that your essay is in Nederlands.
2. When you say “expands the pattern beyond the 20th century” what do you mean?
3. So, Steenblok held to the archetypal/ectypal distinction but rejected the free offer? On what grounds?
4. Here one of Wes’s posts:
The categorical distinction in Lutheran Theology but the other one seems lost.
Andreas,
Wes graciously permitted me to post his summary of Schilder here:
I am not confident about Schilder’s reading of De Moor. That needs to be checked. The TA/TE distinction isn’t that complicated, especially since we now have Junius, De Vera Theologia in English. Scripture is not the archetype. By definition, anything that we can comprehend cannot be the archetype. Scripture is necessarily ectypal.
To take up Schilder’s challenge, some medieval theologians did talk about our knowledge of the natural world as ectypal or as a “similitude” of the divine knowledge.
We can read DeMoor here.
Notice that he argued with the Remonstrant Limborch, in defense of the Categorical Distinction. What I see here is a fairly standard defense of the CD. I wonder where Schilder was reading?
Thank you for your response! That is the passage of Schilder I focussed on.
Influence is a relative word, because Schilder takes the broad strokes of De Moors theology, but not the details. Just yesterday I discussed Schilders way of interpreting texts with a student who did his bachelor thesis on the way Schilder reads poetry. He told me that Schilder read a lot, and used a lot, but took concepts from texts, completely detached from the context of the text and from the intention of the author. So when Schilder is influenced by De Moor, it is in how far Schilder uses words, but not necessary the thoughts of De Moor. So it is possible that Schilder read the part of De Moor you posted and he gave his own twist to it. I looked up the books of his library (http://www.neocalvinisme.nl/ks/bib/ksbibm.html) and he didn’t own the continuus commentary of De Moor, but his co-professor at the young liberated university, Seakle Greijdanus did.
I mean with the expansion of the pattern that it is not strictly something of the 20th century but that is has a precedent in De Moor,more or less. Maybe ‘expanding’ is the wrong word, because is suggests the other direction into time (future) than the direction I meant (history). (I can imagin that Schilder is hard to translate, I experience some difficulties to expres my own theology in proper English 😉
Steenblok rejected the offer because he reasoned that Christ cannot offer what he hasn’t promised. I should dig deeper in Steenblok, but I know it has something to do with his definition of ‘offer’. A church historian suggested that he had Asperger syndrome and had troubles with non-literal meanings. But that sounds to ad hominem to me, he was a decent theologian, I suspect there is more behind it.