This moving tribute by the publisher of Dr. Praasma’s later words is reprinted by permission from Christian Renewal, of which Mr. Hultink is managing editor.

On the morning of December 3, I received my last letter from Dr. Louis Praamsma. It was dated November 30. Receiving this letter was a strange sensation for I had already been informed that he was no longer with us. This letter was a response to a request in an earlier letter I had sent him. The letter opened with the words, “Beste Jan, Hartelijk dank voor je brief. Mijn reactie is: ‘bij na bewogen’ (je kent dat oude versje wei), en ik was in de geest al bezig een artikel te schrijven, maar ik voelde deze morgen dat ik het niet kon. Mijn hoofd zit me in de weg, daar heb ik vee! last van.” (Dear John, Hearty thanks for your letter. My reaction is: ‘almost persuaded’ (you probably know that popular song), and in spirit I was already busy composing an article, but I couldn‘t this morning because I didn’t feel well. My head is bothering me, it is giving me much difficulty lately.)

He went on in his letter to express joy at the prospect of visiting a special clinic in London, Ontario and hoped that a thorough examination would alleviate the angina attacks and the dizzying effects of the pills he was taking. He closed the letter by asking me to pray for him as he would pray for me (he knew I had been sick).

It was not to be. God in His wisdom had decided that on earth the work of His faithful servant, Louis Praamsma, was finished. On the evening of December 2 in the year of our Lord 1984, he who never ceased to fight the good fight of faith was laid to rest. But Louis Praamsma died with the unshakable assurance that his God would not only provide for those he loved but also for the church he loved and served so faithfully.

By the grace of God, Dr. Praamsma remained active and alert up to the very end. Although his angina attacks must have been a constant reminder of the brevity of life and an affirmation of the nearness of that last great enemy, he nevertheless was enabled to continue his labors until the very week God called him home.

This morning I finished reading the proofs of what will now be Dr. Louis Praamsma‘s final book revealingly titled: Let Christ Be King. It is interesting to note, as pointed out by Riemer Praamsma in his article elsewhere in this issue, that his father began and ended his career by writing about Abraham Kuyper. Almost forty years ago, in 1945, Dr. Praamsma published his thesis e ntitled, Abraham Kuyper as Church Historian. Forty years later he completed his life‘s work by writing: Let Christ Be King: The Life and Times of Abraham Kuyper. The span of an entire generation lay between those two publications. Why this preoccupation with Abraham Kuyper?

Let Christ Be King is unquestionably the crowning achievement of an active literary career carried on while all the time serving as full-time pastor. In this book Dr. Praamsma brings to bear an entire lifetime of reflection and insight upon the life and writings of a man he loved dearly. After discussing the life and times of Abraham Kuyper with great feeling and insight in a way that at times reads like an intriguing novel, Dr. Praamsma writes in the concluding chapter that “Kuyper was a giant who straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. His life bridged the closing of one era and the opening of another . By his influence conservatism was conquered, liberalism thwarted and socialism checked. Reformed theology was renewed, honesty in the church was proclaimed, the confession was honored and the Kingship of Christ was professed.”

   

In this quotation lies the key to the question why Dr. Praamsma was so preoccupied with the life and work of Abraham Kuyper. The reader must not forget, as he reads these words about the great Calvinist, Abraham Kuyper, that they are words quoted by a man who had an intimate knowledge of the church of the Reformation he loved so much. Louis Praamsma was not blind to the personal failings of this great man nor was he ignorant of the shortcomings of the reformed community during Kuyper’s lifetime. But these shortcomings paled in comparison to the modernism and the naked unbelief which everywhere manifested themselves in the reformed churches in The Netherlands during the early years of Kuyper’s career when Kuyper himself was still a modernist.

Louis Praamsma was so attracted to the writings of Kuyper because Kuyper, more than anyone who came before him, identified and fought the collective evils of conservatism, liberalism and socialism which were eating away at the heart of the confession of the people of God . Kuyper succeeded, more than anyone else, in opening the meaning of the Scriptures for the life of the ordinary man so that they sought, with heart and soul, to proclaim the Lordship ofJesus Christ in all of life. Those who think and say that Louis Praamsma was a stuffy conservative never knew the man and his writings and have failed miserably to understand the warmth and genius of a man of God who was deeply under the influence of the great Dutch Calvinist who dedicated his life to one great goal: Let the people of God everywhere acknowledge the Kingship of Christ. This also was the lifelong quest of Louis Praamsma as he wrote and worked among the sons and daughters of the Reformation.

In the opening chapter of his mov ing book on Abraham Kuyper, Dr. Praamsma points out to his readers that “the 19th century was in the first place a reaction against the frightening aspect of the French Revolution. Yet at the same time it carried the ideas of the French Revolution further. It opened the door both to reaction and to liberalism, to conservatism and to socialism, to all manner of new theologies and to a revival of the old one, to secularism and to evangelism and to agnostic idealism. When Kuyper was young he assimilated all the new ideas of his time. However, when it pleased God to convert him, He used all the remarkable powers of Kuyper’s mind to renew the Dutch Reformed Church and to liberate the people of God in The Netherlands, together with their children, from a house of bondage. In his activities in both church and state the cry of Kuyper‘s heart was: ‘Let Christ be King!’”

When Kuyper appeared on the Dutch scene the belief in the sovereignty of man was proclaimed from many reformed pulpits and the gold of the great Reformation had grown dim. But for the converted Abraham Kuyper the pivotal turning point in history became the ascension of Christ and the revelation of how God’s grace wrestled throughout history against the consequences of sin . Kuyper once again emphasized the “Calvinistic character of the nation and appealed without apology to the energy, fearlessness and faith of the Reformation era.” As Dr. Praamsma points out in his book, “When Kuyper died, free Christian schools were to be found from north to south . Believers were applying Christian principles in their homes, churches and associations. Christian men of science were demonstrating that belief in the Bible was not antiquated but up-to-date. The face of the country had been renewed.”

Once again we ask the question what it was about Abraham Kuyper that intrigued Louis Praamsma to the point that he began his professional life by writing about this great Christian statesman and forty years later concluded his life by again writing on Kuyper for an English-speaking audience. For a complete answer to this question the readers will have to turn to Praamsma’s new book. For it is in this book, more than any other book, that the author pours out his own heart and his own soul and reveals, time and again, that the cry of his own life was also: “Let Christ be King in home, church and school. Let the people of God above everything else remain faithful to the Word of God and to the confessions as these have been articulated by the faithful throughout the ages.”

As one reads the many books as well as the numerous articles that Dr. Praamsma wrote on a very wide range of subjects, one is struck by one recurring theme: “People of God, for Christ’s sake, be true to your confession!” This theme surfaces time and time again in every book and every article that Dr. Praamsma wrote.

In his magnum opus (great work), which has already appeared in fo ur double volumes in Dutch under the title, De kerk van aile tijden, and which will appear in English in eight* volumes, the organizational principle is once again the author’s overriding concern to point out to the people of God the history of obedience and disobedience of the church throughout the ages. The underlying warning is always there: Be true to your confession. In this great work, Dr. Praamsma conclusively demonstrates that in our age there are no new heresies, only variations on heresies that a re often as old as the church of Jesus Christ herself. His extensive knowledge of the history of the church reinforced the biblical emphasis for him that only Jesus Christ can preserve His church. In the face of countless attacks made by satan upon the church, there is only one hope, one future for the church: Jesus Christ her Lord!

Dr. Praamsma has no patience in his books and articles with those who live out of the pretense that they possess within themselves the power to establish God ‘s Kingdom on earth, here and now. They have no humility and deny the power of satan . The number of those who believe that they can bring salvation to mankind is leg ion. But the road on which they take the Church of Jesus Christ is a road that leads to death. There is no hope in this modern century for those who seek their salvation outside of Jesus Christ. For this reason, and in the face of great personal opposition, Dr. Praamsma persisted throughout his life in pointing his listeners to the indispensable need of remaining true to the reformed confessions.

Before he left The Netherlands, Dr. Praamsma was already criticized severely by liberal colleagues and professors at various theological schools whom he dared to criticize. The work of these people undermined the confession of the people of God and this hurt him deeply. In Canada also, his work was not always appreciated. Upon his return from the Free University in The Netherlands and after having assumed a teaching position at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Henk Hart in the book, Out of Concern for the Church wrote: “At best it (such a faith) halts at the sterile doctrinal infighting and heritage–preserving leadership of a Dr. Louis Praamsma, whose range of problematics , characteristically, is largely confined to the Christian Reformed Church. This kind of Christianity can only be practiced behind church walls. On weekdays its people serve either the free enterprise conservative capitalist establishment or the liberal-socialist hypocrisy in the democratic West.” Why this bitter, public attack upon a man whose reformed life and actions were unassailable by a young upstart who had just returned from The Netherlands and the ink on whose dissertation was still wet? The terrible irony of these words is that today, fifteen years later, we know the extent to which Henk Hart has himself refined the art of sterile infighting within the ICS, the downtown Toronto Christian schools, and St. Matthew’s in the Basement, thereby frustrating the work of Jesus Christ in this world.

What Dr. Praamsma writes of Kuyper in the concluding chapter of Let Christ Be King, can also be said of Louis Praamsma himself: “He (Kuyper) did not bow his knee to the baals of his time, whether in the form of scientism, mammonism, evolution ism or culturalism. He fought for a free church, a free Christian school, a free university, a free Christian labor movement and a free Christian political party. . . He respected the laws of history, recognized different Christian communities and acknowledged the pluraformity of churches. Yet he always drew the Line when he sensed that people were not being true to their sacred commitments (emphasis added). In 1914 Kuyper wrote to the board of the Free University: “If your association should decide to accept a . . . teacher, an instructor, who would definitely deviate from the confess ion , rest assured that in such a case I would cut off every connection and contact with the Free University, and I would do so publicly.’” When the Henk Harts of this world understand this sentiment, they will begin to understand the Louis Praamsmas of this world. The Kuypers and Praamsmas will tolerate much but they will not stand idly by while the reformed confessions are being trampled upon.

What was said of Abraham Kuyper may now be said of Louis Praarnsma, “He spoke the truth even when this meant estrangement from people he would have preferred as his friends. He could be very tolerant but drew the line when he sensed that people were not being true to their sacred commitments.” For this reason he spent much of his life speaking out against men such as Jan Lever , H.M. Kuitert, H. Wiersinga, Augustine, Koole and many other Dutch leaders who played fast and loose with the Scriptures and the reformed confessions, leading young people under their stewardship to the abyss of unbelief.

During his lifetime Dr. Praamsma was an outspoken advocate of Christian schools and Christian organizations. Already in 1959 when he addressed the All Ontario School Rally held in Hamilton, he cautioned his listeners not to fall into the trap of conformity to the world but to establish distinctive Christian schools so that covenant children might be given an education which would teach them to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And Louis Praamsma was intimately acquainted with the writings and labors of men such as Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd, Van Riessen, Popma, Zuidema, Runner, and a host of others involved in the reformation of the sciences. And without exception he had a deep admiration and respect for all these men insofar as they were faithful to their reformed “beginnings.” As a historian he was better acquainted than most with the history of the Society for Calvinistic Philosophy, with its strengths and its weaknesses. And the influences and the insights of these men are everywhere present in his own work.

It is not true, as the myth-makers are already beginning to suggest, that Dr. Praamsma disassociated himself from the ARSS/AACS because he was not free from “the incipient, Kuyperian dualism as it came to expression in the doctrine of common grace.” (See Bernard Zylstra’s article in the January 4, 1985 issue of Calvinist Contact.) Before the myth is elevated to the status of historical fact, the myth-makers would do well to read that chapter of the book, Let Christ Be King, which is entitled “The Two Graces.” Even a superficial reading of this chapter will quickly dispel the unfounded notion that the reason that Dr. Praamsma did not associate himself with the AACS in its early years was because of some dualism he had inherited from Abraham Kuyper. He bad better reasons than that to exercise caution. And a good number of those reasons can still be found in the book authored by AACS staff members entitled: Out of Concern for the Church, as well as its sequel: Will All the King’s Men.

No, ifit already becomes necessary to talk publicly about why Dr. Praamsma did not associate himself closely with the ARSS/AACS during the years that John Olthuis and James Olthuis and Hendrik Hart and Arnold de Graaf joined the staff, the reader would do well to consult those articles which Dr. Praamsma himself wrote on the subject at that time. And those articles are readily available. In an article written in 1967 in which he congratulated the Institute for Christian Studies on its opening he wrote: “Let me say from the start that I sympathize essentially with the ideals of the ARSS; that it is my sincere wish that God will bless this Association for the advancement of Christian scholarship; that I am convinced of the deplorable, almost chaotic situation on the campuses of most of our universities where a lack of sound Christian leadership is more than evident; and that I share the hope of the ARSS that it will turn the tide. There should be no misunderstanding among us concerning our commitment to the Reformed (Calvinistic) view of world and life, and I would like to stress the R of the ARSS.”

It is true that Dr. Praamsrna did not enthusiastically endorse the work of the ARSS/AACS during the years that the young graduates from the Free University rose to positions of leadership and soon published such writings as Out of Concern for the Church. For some of us it was extremely difficult at that time to understand his caution. What we could not see then, Dr. Praamsma, with the keen eye of an historian had already begun to detect: faithlessness to our beginnings. Many who lacked his depth of insight and perception then, can certainly tell today.

Dr. Praamsma was critical of the Institute for Christian Studies for the same reason that he was critical of the Free University of Amsterdam: those placed in positions of leadership were being unfaithful to their “beginnings,” to the task and mandate to which they had been appointed. And like Abraham Kuyper, Louis Praamsma raised his voice in protest against this faithlessness. “If your association (i.e. the Free University) should decide to accept an instructor who would definitely deviate from the confession,” Kuyper wrote a few years before his death, “rest assured that in such a case I would cut off every connection and contact with the Free University, and I would do so publicly.” On this crucial issue of faithfulness to the confessions both Kuyper and Praamsma were men who could not be moved. It was not for naught that it was said at his funeral that Louis Praamsma during his life was a man of beslistheid, belijndheid, and belijdenisvastheid. He feared and honored God more than his fellow man.

How it hurt Louis Praamsma as he watched his worst fears become reality, especially during the last years of his life. A dark shadow descended upon the bright hopes he held for the reformed community in North America and its Kuyperian inheritance, as the Institute for Christian Studies gradually became a house divided against itself. Its energies became absorbed fighting about issues that should have constituted common ground. Reformed professors at the Institute began to advocate the ideas of their liberal colleagues at the Free University of Amsterdam. A lengthy, divisive, acrimonious debate preceeded Arnold de Graars dismissal in 1980. The unthinkable, from a confessional point of view, became the substance of prolonged debate. Man began to decide over life and death. Abortion became permissible, the liberation theology of Jiirgen Moltmann and others made its inroads into the classroom, the “distinction” of referring to God as a female on national television for the first time in the history of Canada went to an institute professor, homosexual marriages were seriously discussed as a pastoral solution to homosexual problems and the Institute’s professor of Theology and Ethics became a confessing member of the most liberal church community in the land, the United Church of Canada. What was already present in seed form in the late sixties now began to manifest itself with a vengeance. The Institute for Christian Studies was no longer true to its confession.

But a lifetime of functioning as a prophet had taken its toll. Louis Praamsma’s heart began to weaken. He no longer possessed the psychic and nervous energy needed to wage the battle. He resigned himself to the comforting knowledge that not he, but Jesus Christ, would preserve His church against the gates of hell if necessary.

He turned once again to his books. He reached into the very depth of his heart and once again wrote with great feeling the story (history) of Christ and His bride. Once more he demonstrated from the pages of history that only a church which is faithful to its “beginnings” can withstand the terrible onslaught of satan in this world. Only they who endure to the end shall be saved. Christ! not man, is our salvation. Ask and it shall be given. If only the people of God would be obedient to His Word.

But confession, of and in itself, is not enough. Faith without works is dead. So Louis Praamsma marshalled all his great insight and energies one last time. No one, except perhaps his wife, will ever know the toll this work took upon his health. He could have spent the last years of retirement reading mystery novels while others did the work. But circumstances did not permit it.

For what was to be the last time, he took up his pen. In the most dramatic way he knew how, he combined confession and Christian living. He wrote a book on the life and times of Abraham Kuyper and let the jubilant cry go forth with power from his lips for one last time: Let Christ be King. Confess it! Live it!

Louis Praamsma is dead, yet he shall live. May God comfort those who mourn. The legacy he has left us in his books is invaluable.

It has been said that as leaders of the older generation are departing to be with their Lord, there are no new leaders to take their place. That is a great tragedy, but a tragedy that has been brought about by an inability among potential leaders to generate among God’s people a sense of trust and confidence. The greatest tragedy of our time is that the younger leaders have been unwilling to learn from the old. Indecision, uncertainty and equivocation as well as an unwillingness or inability to stand on principle and suffer the consequences, has characterized the words and actions of potential leaders. There is a debilitating unwillingness to place principle above friendship. This is the hard but crucial lesson our young potential leaders have failed to learn from their elders.

The hour is late, the time is short. Yet we may work while it is still day. More than ever the church ofJesus Christ needs leaders like Louis Praamsma whose first love for Him bloomed during their childhood years, and blossoms still.

There is hope! Yes, thank God, there is still hope. We find that hope firmly confessed in the concluding chapter of The Church in the Twentieth Century, where Louis Praamsma writes: “Time has not yet run out, and the Church of Christ may continue to build on the unchangeable promises of God. We have the promise that ‘this gospel of the kingdom’ will be preached in the whole world. We have the promise that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the Church. And finally we have the promise that the believers, even when others faint with fear and foreboding because of what is corning over the world, may look up and raise their heads because their redemption is drawing near. Yes, the Kingdom will certainly come!”

For Louis Praamsma, servant of the Most High, it already has.

*Volume 7 is already in print under the title: The Church in the Twentieth Century. Paideia Press, 1981.

Louis Praamsma was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1910 and emigrated to Canada in 1958. He studied at de Christelijke Kweekschool, Sneek; her Gymnasium, Sneek, andde Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (B.D ., 1934; Th.D., 1945). In 1935 he was ordained as a minister in GKN and served as pastor of Niewolda GKN (1935–1944); Stadskanaal GKN (1944–1949); Groningen GKN (1949–1958); First CRC ofToronto, Ontario (1958–1962); Fruitland CRC, Ontario (1963–1972) and Collingwood CRC, Ontario (1972–1974). He was emeritated in 1974. He was a teacher in Church History at de Gereformeerde Kweekschool voor Onderwijzers, Groningen (1952–1958). He was Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary (1962 –1963). In The Netherlands he served on several synodical committees of de GKN. The synodical committees of the CRC on which he has served include “Infallibility and Inspiration in the Light of Scripture and the Creeds,” “Ecumeniciry and the World Council,” and “Synodical Interim Committee.” He was editor of Groininger Kerkbode (1957–1958).