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Philippus Hoedemaker and Abraham Kuyper shared a dream: to establish a university on the foundation of the Reformed faith. They were among the three or four men in the entire nation who, by Philippus van Ronkel’s count, could pull off such a thing. Hoedemaker was not deterred by the smallness of the beginnings, for God could accomplish great things through such a Gideon’s band. The church needed it and the nation needed it. Unbelief would not prevail.
They will not have it
The old Netherlands
It remains, despite its misery
The property of God and the fathers!
So they sang with Isaac da Costa.
Hoedemaker’s efforts to pursue science on the Reformed basis, in which the Bible and theology play a central role, is chronicled in the addresses included here. The Dedication given at the founding of the university explains the intention in broad strokes. A thorough justification of the Reformed basis of the university is provided in The Antirevolutionary Principle and Higher Education. From there Hoedemaker proceeds to a historical investigation of the Reformed principle vis-a-vis its main antagonists in the Dutch university context - Cartesianism and rationalism, Roman Catholicism, and Lutheranism. In Church and School he once again justifies the existence of the Free University and its Reformed principle, but acknowledges some dissension in the ranks, as the university begins to feel the effect of the church struggle. And in the provocatively titled
Why Study Theology at the Free University? he confronts his students with the question, are you simply seeking a paying position somewhere, or is your heart committed to pursuing the truth, to putting science on its proper basis, regardless of the cost? The question was anything but academic, as the university was not accredited and its graduates could count on employment neither in the national church nor in civil government.
Then came the church split and Hoedemaker’s departure from the Free University. But he could still speak of the love he bore for that institution, despite its departure from the Reformed principle as he formulated it. All the church and all the people had become his motto, something which Kuyper and the Free University left far behind.
