The Nadere Reformatie
Translated into English as Dutch Second Reformation or Dutch Further Reformation, refers to an era in church history during the Dutch Republic from ca. 1600-1750. The representatives of the period endeavored to work out the principles of the Protestant Reformation in family life, church, and society balancing and valuing both orthodoxy and piety. As such the Nadere Reformatie resembles other expressions of the Post-reformation Reformed era including English Puritanism and German Pietism.
A major representative of the Nadere Reformatie
Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711) was a major representative of the Nadere Reformatie, and a contemporary of Gisbertus Voetius and Herman Witsius. À Brakel’s pastorate in Rotterdam from 1683-1711 was marked by the monumental publication of a four-volume work entitled the Redelijke Godsdienst (The Christian’s Reasonable Service) which was a systematic theology written for the members of the congregation. The work is permeated with practical and experiential application of expounded doctrines, thereby establishing the vital relationship between objective truth and the subjective experience of that truth.
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