My mind is transported back to 1966. The theology faculty of the Free University had not yet moved to the “suburbs” of Amsterdam, but was packed into that wonderful complex of old buildings on the Keisersgracht. I took a seat close to the open window looking out on the canal. I had never heard or studied the Dutch language; I had never even known a member of the Christian Reformed Church. That first year I heard with understanding very little. More than once I yearned for an extra long fishing pole that could reach the canal. Yet he was drawn, as many students have been, to the enthusiasm with which Professor Berkouwer “did” theology right there before your eyes. Theology fascinated him. I sensed that long before I began to understand the language.
Then there was a cultural gap that was more severe in some ways than the language. Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer had the international stature of his two most distinguished predecessors, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, but he wrestled with theological issues and historical debates that form a bewildering maze to an outsider. When I read the news of his death, I noted with surprise that a total of 42 students obtained doctorates under his guidance. Somehow, I thought it would be a lot more. I certainly feel unworthy to be in such elite company. That feeling is not lessened when I have from time to time been given opportunity to write about him. Is it possible for an outsider to point out a hole in the dike, without transgressing the bounds of arrogance? I do not know. I do know that during the lectures, in my marginal notes of his many books which I have read, in correspondence during the finalizing of my dissertation, and in private conversations there were questions and problems about which I could not be completely at peace. I sometimes felt very much alone and suspecting that I had missed the point altogether. Some years later Berkouwer published a work that was to confirm that my concerns were not imaginary.
In 1974 a significant book appeared which was translated into English three years later: A Half Century of Theology. The unique value of this volume among his many writings is the autobiographical insight it reveals of Berkouwer’s participation in the period from 1920 to 1970. Expanding on a survey given during the completion of his regular lectures at the Free University of Amsterdam, Berkouwer seeks to give “an overview of the fascinating events, with all their struggles and discussions, of the theology of this half-century.”1 There are aspects that “are still profound and important, and, far from disappearing, still meet us as we scout today’s theological arena.” It is Berkouwer’s contention “that we are wrestling today with questions put on the agenda a half century ago.”2 Yet his closing chapter in this revealing work is entitled, “Concern for the Faith,” and is punctuated with thoughts about doubt, fear, unrest, uncertainty, alarm. and theology’s inadequacy in understanding. “The quest,” says Berkouwer, is “for a deeper and richer understanding,”) but one suspects the measure for judging success in this quest has changed from what has historically guided the church.
The relevance of Berkouwer’s pilgrimage for this side of the Atlantic needs to be understood. His direct and indirect influence is considerable. During this same half century the American evangelical community has witnessed a profound transformation. There were those respected evangelicals who, willingly or not, began to be identified by the presence of “neo” in front of the name “evangelical.” A growing split was emerging that was 10 become more than a mere intramural struggle. Part and parcel of this struggle was a growing difference of opinion on the doctrine of Scripture, a difference popularized by Lindsell’s The Battlefor the Bible.4 The focal point is inerrancy. So aggressive had the errantists become that the erosion among evangelicals was rampant. The situation had deteriorated to the point that we saw the emergence in 1977 of an evangelical counter-offensive in the form of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Warfield versus Berkouwer, a distinction underlined by Berkouwer himself, has become a popular symbol of the battle.5
Whether disciple or critic, those referring to Berkouwer as a “Reformed” theologian feel a necessity to qualify the definition. Rogers, for example, qualifies to remove him from the “bad company” of Warfield or Protestant scholastics. ‘Van Til qualifies to include him with the “bad company” of the neo-orthodox.’ Berkouwer stands with one foot in a confessional heritage which he refuses to abandon and another foot in the world of ecumenical ventures which frequently conflict with his heritage. To some, Berkouwer represents a breath of fresh air, providing the evangelical with a way out of the dilemma between “conservative” and “liberal.” To others his theology is at best a frustrating inconsistency and at worst a theological capitulation.
The thesis of this article is that Berkouwer has made some significant departures from his heritage, and on the basis of these departures there is justification for seeing a line of development from Berkouwer to the neo-evangelical movement and the rejection of biblical inerrancy. As contemporary evangelicals wake up to the fact that they have been robbed of much of the heart of classical Reformed orthodoxy, the “Dutch connection” may not be overlooked. Berkouwer is, of course, but one of many influences. He is, however, a considerable influence.
EARLY AND LATER BERKOUWER
Among disciples and critics alike, it is commonplace to distinguish between an early and later Berkouwer. Whether one calls it maturity or capitulation, there is certainly change. Berkouwer believes he missed the “real intentions of Barth” in his 1932 dissertation on the new German theology.8 His sympathy with Barth had increased significantly a couple of decades later in The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, and by 1974 he was defending Barth against the likes of Van Til and Pannenberg.9 His two main works on Scripture (1928 and 1966–67) reflect this change as dramatically as any. Krabbendam sees the early Berkouwer on Scripture as “practically identical” to Warfield, while the later Berkouwer is “critical of Warfield” and “endorses and adopts the neo-orthodox position.”10 Berkouwer’s two books on Roman Catholicism subsequent to the Second Vatican Council breathe a different spirit from his early work, The Conflict with Rome.
It is a fair assumption that this “early/later” evaluation of Berkouwer accounts for the fact that only in more recent years has there been a growing chorus of critics willing to question the orthodoxy of such an esteemed “Reformed” theologian. In late 1975, I presented a paper critical of Berkouwer which was subsequently published as a monograph entitled A Hole in the Dike. The most prevalent response to that paper was from those who had become uneasy with Berkouwer but were not quite sure why. The absence of firm criticism of Berkouwer was no doubt to be attributed to their judgments of charity about a man of his stature and to the style of his writing, which is circumlocutory.
The critical voices are on the increase, however. With the appearance in 1975 of the English translation of Berkouwer’s work on Holy Scripture, a new wave of criticism was heard. At a time when evangelicals were growing in the awareness that biblical inerrancy is the issue where the battle must be fought, Berkouwer’s Holy Scripture was tried and found wanting. One need only read the papers from the “Inerrancy Summit” in Chicago (1978), sponsored by the International Council on Biblical lnerrancy, to see Berkouwer attacked from a variety of quarters.
Paralleling this increasing criticism is the emergence of Berkouwer as a rallying point of the neo-evangelical and errantist movement. Find someone in the Reformed tradition who denies inerrancy but wants to affirm a “high view” of Scripture and its “infallible message,” and he will probably model his doctrine of Scripture from Berkouwer. Because of his prominence in the battle, Jack Rogers has become the most symbolic of this influence. Editor of Biblical Authority, a book which attacks inerrancy and the “Hodge-Warfield…rationalistic defense of Scripture,” Rogers had earlier written a doctoral dissertation on the doctrine of Scripture in the Westminster Confession and pushed credulity to the limits by trying to make the Westminster Divines’ view of Scripture essentially the same as that of Berkouwer.11 Such an un-historical conclusion apparently is the fundamental credential by which Rogers has become a spokesman for the errantist movement among neo-evangelicals in this country. Such “revisionist” interpretation of the Westminster Assembly has continued in this disciple of Berkouwer, who is today a prominent spokesman within the old line liberal Presbyterian denomination.
Any discussion of an early and later Berkouwer should also take into account a significant article by Hendrikus, a neo-orthodox theologian, on “The Method of Berkouwer’s Theology.” Berkhof finds three phases in Berkouwer’s theology, the first of which acknowledges “the absolute authority of Scripture.”12 The second phase Berkhof calls “the salvation content of Scripture,” which begins as early as the beginning of Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics in 1949.13 This phase is less polemical and moves from the authority of Scripture in an absolute sense to the nature of that authority, namely, the salvation content via Christ. The third phase is “the existential direction of Scripture,” with its kerygmatic-existential correlation manifesting itself in Berkouwer’s changed view on Dort and his “asymmetrical” emphasis on election.14
This methodological analysis by Berkhof is a strong indictment to anyone from an evangelical perspective. Simply put, Berkhof is saying that Berkouwer went from traditional Reformed orthodoxy to existential theology via a form of neo-orthodoxy. Whether one agrees with this analysis or not, a theologian of Berkhof’s stature, writing in an academic Festschrift honoring Professor Berkouwer, must have seen some radical evidence to draw such a far-reaching conclusion. I was in the Netherlands at the time and understood that Berkouwer protested vigorously to Berkhof, though I saw nothing in print. Subsequently, however, Hendrick Krabbendam has provided an important reference in this issue by citing a Dutch work by F.W. Buytendach to the effect “that Berkouwer has acknowledged the transition from the first to the second phase, but objected to the construct of a third phase.”15 Apparently Berkollwer is willing to ackowledge a significant change, a change which resulted in seeing Scripture content as not necessarily bound to scriptural form. This change according to Krabbendam, would have been impossible “without Barthian type of neo-orthodoxy.”16
Looking back at the conclusion of his “half century,” Berkouwer came to acknowledge how he changed or softened his former criticism of modern trends in theology. Not surprisingly, there is a chapter devoted to Karl Barth. In that chapter and throughout A Half Century of Theology, one is struck by Berkouwer’s acknowledged sympathy with Kierkegaard, Brunner and Barth in opposition to religious self-confidence. Berkouwer relates his change in attitude toward Barth on the question of faith certainty, and many quotes are given from Barth which sound very much like Berkouwer’s own solution to the certainty question, i.e., knowing “in faith.” In a chapter on Scripture, Berkouwer admits that he used to see kerygmatic theology as “the ‘way out’ of the problems of uncertainty.” He now sees it differently. Opposing Pannenberg in support of Barth, he now sees such accent on the kerygma “not as a ‘way out,’ but as the way in which the witness employs its power.”17
As we move to a more specific analysis of Berkouwer’s thought, a significant fact will emerge concerning the early and later Berkouwer. While such a distinction is valid and helpful, we will see that the seeds of what many consider tile later Berkouwer were present very early. No doubt to the surprise of some, Berkhof is correct in seeing a significant change as early as the beginning of Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics in 1949.18 The “hole in the dike” was present even that early. To the extend Berkouwer accurately reflects on the “half century” in which he participated, the seeds were present even at the beginning.
As I read the earlier Studies in Dogmatics, there was often the feeling that Berkouwer was orthodox on many doctrines in spite of his methodology. Perhaps it was not Berkouwer himself but the flood of his disciples in whom unorthodox views were more glaring which alerted so many in recent days to trace these views back to Professor Berkouwer. It was in this light that I began more and more to use the phrase, “hole in the dike,” as descriptive of Berkouwer’s influence.
SCRIPTURE AND CONFESSION
A fundamental impression that emerges from Berkouwer’s writings is that he seeks to be in subjection to the Word of God. Theology is “relevant” only when it is “relative to the Word of God.” “Theology is occupied in continuous attentive and obedient listening to the Word of God.”19 Because God’s love in Jesus Christ is revealed in Scripture, “beyond the word of Scripture we dare not go.”20 The English translation adds, “There is nothing beyond that.” That sentence is not in the Dutch, but it does reflect the total dichotomy in Berkouwer’s thought between explicit scriptural teaching and all other knowledge, whether deduced from Scripture or from non-biblical sources. The commendable aim of obedience to Scripture may be abused by such a dichotomy, however, and Berkouwer’s aversion to the “good and necessary consequence” statement in the Westminster Confession is a prime example of this.21
It is important to realize that Berkouwer is doing more than claiming to be in subjection to the Word of God. He is critical of the inerrancy doctrine and believes his view is really honoring God’s Word while the inerrantist’s is not. “Some,” he says, “are fascinated by a miraculous ‘correctness,’” but “in the end it will damage reverence for Scripture more than it will further it.”22 “In appealing to its authority we are not dealing with a formal principle but with a deep spiritual witness to Jesus Christ….”23 Thus a person who operates with “a certain theory of inspiration” (i.e., inerrancy) “is almost certainly going to cry ‘It stands written’ and still come out with something that misses the truth and power of Scripture.”24 “To speak of errors…is to speak of an unhistorical approach.”25 “The slogan, ‘It stands written,’ is not a magic wand that can be waved to eliminate all problems….”26 Berkouwer, reflecting on his 1938 work on Scripture, affirms he is no less committed to the significance of “It stands written,”27 even though his present understanding of what that means has changed considerably.
Of course, anyone may claim obedience to Scripture. He may do so with utmost integrity.28 The neo-orthodox, no less than neo-evangelicals, claim to be those who are truly honoring and reverently listening to God’s Word.29 Van Til, acknowledging some validity in Berkouwer’s criticism that he was not sufficiently exegetical, nevertheless makes this timely observation: “One can be ‘exegetical’ in terms of the neo-orthodox schematism of thought and this is, after all, to be speculative first, and biblical afterwards.”30
Closely related to Berkouwer’s subjection to Scripture is his concern that confessions not lose their derivative character. Their subordinate status is coupled with another qualification. In an important article on confessions with special regard to the Canons of Dort, Berkouwer speaks of the increasing awareness in recent times of the historically conditioned nature of confessions.31 There is, according to Berkouwer, a certain vulnerability in all confessions brought about by their reaction against a particular heresy with consequent selection and exegesis of “appropriate” passages.
Writing elsewhere concerning the question of whether Chalcedon is a Christological terminal point, Berkouwer writes: “For the Scriptures are richer than any pronouncement of the church, no matter how excellent it be…”32 “Chalcedon is not as rich as that Scriptural fullness on which the church…is continually allowed to draw.”33 What is perhaps the only basic difference in his most recent work is the stronger emphasis on the inadequacies of any confessional statement. Answering the fear that questioning Chalcedon is “another alienation from the church’s confession,” Berkouwer writes:
It is worth remembering then that any fixed definition can fossilize, especially if the definitions are no longer understood. Indeed, we should remember that no definition is adequate…Orthodoxy is maintained only in conformity with the truth that the church had in mind when it tried to state truth in its inadequate formulas.34
This is a subtle but significant move from a warning of the inadequacies of language to what is almost an obsession with a confession’s inadequacies necessitating a different measurement for certainty.
While Berkouwer himself has a high regard for the creeds of the church, such a theoretically accurate stance acknowledges the possibility of significant error in all human statements and runs the risk of relativizing any doctrinal statement. Berkouwer rejects relativizing run wild, but the danger lingers of an increasing transformation of what we once believed to be truth by one who zealously maintains the absolute authority of Scripture.
Any student of Berkouwer would, in this context, have one key word constantly in mind. In both lectures and writing, one word increasingly appears as fundamental to his historical understanding of theology. Intent! “What was the intent of the apostle or prophet in Scripture?” “What is the deepest intent of the framers of the confession?” “What was Rome really intending to say at Trent?” And on it goes. In a confessional statement, therefore, one must be alerted to the relation between the “unchangeable affirmation and changeable representation,” the “really intended content, and the form in which this content comes to expression,” and the fact that no form can adequately express the intended content in final form.35
There is an unfortunate temptation in the use of this valid interpretive method of seeking the true intent of those who spoke. The danger is thai when we come to disagree with our theological heritage, but do not want to step out of that rich heritage, we can simply claim their commitment to our content while using historically conditioned forms. The result may be, and has been, the sneaking in of new content under the guise of a new form for the old content. Berkouwer’s re-interpretation of the Canons of Dort throws out the “causal” framework as an unfortunate historical form which tried to say too much and restricts the content (the Synod’s real intent) to a doxological reference to the sovereignty of God’s grace.36 The legitimate question is whether what the Synod of Dort intended to confess regarding the sovereign, predestinating God has disappeared in such a re-interpretation.
The “form-content distinction” provides Berkouwer with a ready-made vehicle for ecumenical dialogue where “hang-ups” with past formulations may be politely set aside to clear the way for “fresh” insights on old problems. Nowhere has this been more visible than in Berkouwer’s discussions with and about Roman Catholic theologians. In his first book on the Second Vatican Council, and even more so in lectures, Berkouwer radiates excitement and enthusiasm over similar methodological developments in the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope John XXTII opened the door by declaring some things to be not absolute (the plea for “unity in the essentials” implied there was an area of non-essentials where differences could be tolerated).37 Berkouwer gives great importance to this statement of the pope on the first day of the council:
The certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which we must ever remain faithful must be examined and expounded by the methods applicable in our times. We must distinguish between the inheritance of the faith itself, or the truths which are contained in our holy doctrine, and the way in which these truths are formulated, of course with the same sense and the same significance.38
Berkouwer relates the pope’s distinction “between the substance and the formulations of the truth” to “similar distinctions that Roman theologians of the new stripe have been making in the recent past.”39 This was an entrance into “the danger zone of Roman Catholic problematics,” quite different from the 1950 encyclical Hurnani Generis of Pius XII.40 And even though Paul VI was less inclined in this direction, Berkouwer sees this new attitude as a significant breakthrough. In this context a whole chapter is given over to “Unchangeability and Changeability of Dogma.”
In a second book growing out of Vatican II, the “intent” idea comes out strongly in a chapter on the continuity of dogma and its sameness. Dogma, Berkouwer says approvingly, was not “timelessly formulated,” but used “historically fixed terminology, thought patterns, and pre-suppositions” which were not without philosophical presuppositions and which must be understood out of their polemical setting.41 “The task of the church and theology is to penetrate through to what the church intended in these formulations and what she wanted to confess.”42 Hand in hand with this new approach is “a strong resistance” against a view of dogma as fixed presuppositions from which logical implications may be drawn.43 This view also was mentioned approvingly in The Second Vatican Council. where it is said that revelation “is not a reservoir of intellectual propositions” but rather “a personal self-disclosure by God in which He encounters the total person.”44
Via the “form-content” distinction, Berkouwer had, with qualification, become a part of a new ecumenical alliance within and without the Roman Church where neo-orthodox theology tends to be the common denominator. While this must be said with care and qualification, it is nonetheless a true perspective on Berkouwer’s development. (To be continued)
FOOTNOTES
1. G.C. Berkouwer, A Half-Century of Theology trans. Lewis B. Smedes, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977), pp. 8–9
2. Ibid., p. 9.
3. Ibid., p. 263.
4. Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977).
5. One of the papers presented at the 1978 “Summit” on inerrancy was precisely on this topic. Cf. Hendrick Krabbcndam, “B.B. Warfield vs. G.C. Berkouwer on Scripture” Summit Papers (unpublished), ed. Norman L. Geisler, International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, Chicago, October 1978, hereinafter cited as Summit Papers, pp.15.1–15.31. These papers were revised and subsequently published.
6. Cf., for example, Jack Rogers, Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), especially pp.134ff., and Jack Rogers, “The Church Doctrine of Biblical Authority,” Biblical Authority, ed. Jack Rogers (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1977), pp. 41ff.; and Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Fransico: Harper & Row, 1979). Rogers stretches generalities to the extreme in the blanket way he includes Kuyper and Bavinck with Berkouwer in opposition to “Old Princeton theology.” Rogers may be unknown to many readers, and some may question why we have not chosen a more prominent figure. The fact is that Rogers’ growing hostility toward everyone’s interpretation of the Westminster Confession except certain contemporary neo-orthodox and neo-evangelical writers, coupled with his vigorous allegiance to Berkouwer, has thrust him to the forefront of spokesmen of a Berkouwer-influence neo-Evangelicalism. We shall see more of his role later in this article. Cf. also John D. Hannah,ed., Inerrancy and the Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), which was sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and addresses the historical thesis of Rogers and McKim. The concluding chapter is my essay: “Berkouwer and the Battle for the Bible.”
7. Cf., for example,Cornelius Van Til, The Sovereignty of Grace (Nutley, N. J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1969), p. 32, where Van Til says of Berkouwer: “His love for the Reformed faith unquestioned”; however, “concomitant with his more ‘positive’ attitude toward both Barth and Rome in recent times goes an increasingly negative attitude toward historic Reformed statements with respect to Scripture and doctrine.” Near the conclusion of the book (p. 86) he states: “Berkouwer now advocates principles similar to those of Barth and of neo-orthodoxy as though through them alone we can defend the teaching of free grace.”
8. Berkouwer, Half-Century, p.45.
9. Ibid., pp. 69, 71.
10. Krabbendam, Summit Papers, pp. 15.3, 15.28.
11. This particular quote is from David Hubbard, “The Current Tensions: Is There a Way Out?” Biblical Authority, p.167.Cf. Jack Barlett Rogers, Scripture in the Westminster Confession (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1966).
12. H. Berkhof, “De Methode van Berkouwer’s Theologie,” ExArulitll Verbi, ed. R. Schippers, G.E. MeulemJan, J.T. Bakker, H.M. Kuitert (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1965), pp. 40–43.
13. Ibid ., pp. 44-48. Rogers and McKirn, Authority and Interpretation, pp. 427–28, give support for Berkhof’s thesis. After the appearance of Berkouwer’s later work on Holy Scripture, Rogers and McKim note the “criticism from some evangelicals who had previously lauded Berkouwer’s theology.” To the question, Had Berkouwer changed? their answer is no. “In actuality he had simply described the approach to Scripture that had enriched his volumes on other doctrines for twenty-five years.”
14. Ibid., pp.48–53.
15. Krabbendam, Summit Papers, p. 15.3, note 6.
16. Ibid.
17. Berkouwer, Half-Century, p. 132.
18. Berkhof, Ex Auditu Verbi, p. 44.
19. G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), p. 9.
20. Ibid., p. 160.
21. Cf., for example, G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, trans. Hugo Bekker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960), pp. 17ff. 22 G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, trans. Jack B. Rogers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. 183.
23. Berkouwer, Half-Century, p. 138.
24. Ibid., p. 139
25. Ibid., p. 140
26. Ibid., p. 141
27. Ibid., p. 139
28. It is interesting to note that on the assumption that Berkouwer is not willfully deceiving us, his writing is inerrant as he defines it. According to Berkouwer, the biblical notion of error is not incorrectness but deception, as in intentional lying. Cf. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, p. 181. Therefore, unless he is willfully trying to deceive us, Berkouwer’s writing is “inerrant.” Following this lead Rogers distinguishes “the biblical notion of error as willful deception” from “error” in the sense of technical accuracy. J. Rogers, Biblical Authority, p. 46. Thus error concerns the writer’s intent. Paul D. Feinberg, “the Meaning of inerrancy,” Summit Papers, p. 10.21, shows how such a definition says too much with this telling comment: “If we accept Rogers’ understanding of error as ‘willful deception’ then almost every book which has ever been written is inerrant.”
29. Cf., for example, Rogers, Confessions of a Conservative Evangelical, pp. 103–104, where he claims Warfield “diverted attention” from a true listening of Scripture because of his concern for inerrancy. This criticism of defenders of inerrancy is implicit in the slogan emblazoned upon the cover of Rogers, ed., Biblical Authority: Turn your Bible from a battleground into a source for spiritual strength.” 50 also Hubbard, Biblical Authority, p. 167: “The Hodge-Warfield brand of Reformed theology, with its rationalistic defense of Scripture, comes close to jeopardizing the solid principle that Scripture is sufficient.”
30. Cornelius Van Til, Toward a Reformed Apologetics (n.p., n.d.), p. 27.
31 G.C. Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” Gereformeerd Theologiscg Tijdscrift LXIII (February, 1963), 1–41.
32 G.C. Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), p. 91.
33. Ibid., p. 96.
34. Berkouwer, Half-Century, p. 241.
35. Berkouwer, Gereformeerd Theologiscg Tijdscrift, pp. 4–5.
36. Ibid., pp. 11–15.
37. G.C. Berkouwer, The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 19–20.
38. Ibid., p. 22, Encyclical Gaudet Mater Ecclesia
39. Ibid., p. 23.
40. Ibill., p. 24.
41. G.C. Berkouwer, Nabetrachting op het Concilie (Kampen: J.H. Kok 1968), p. 52.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 53.
44. Berkouwer, The Second Vatican Council p. 68. K. Rahner is specifically cited.
Dr. Bogue, pastor of the Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Akron, OH, lecturer and author of numerous books, articles and papers, graduated Cum Laude from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Subsequently he earned his Th.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His major professor was Dr. G.c. Berkouwer whose thought is the subject of this discourse.