- A Relation of
Fellowship - A Spiritual
Seed - Gathered in the
Generations - Unconditionally
of Grace - Realized and
Perfected
Our Covenant God
An Exposition of the Doctrine
Of The Covenant From Scripture
By Rev. Herman Veldman
with an appendix:
The Expression "Sanctified in Christ"
In Our Baptism Form
Introduction
By Rev. Thomas Miersma
(web editor)
Rev. Herman Veldman served in the ministry of the gospel in the Protestant Reformed Churches for some forty-six years. In 1947 and 1948, while pastor of the church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he was also writing for the Standard Bearer under the rubric “Our Doctrine.” At that time he was treating the Doctrine of God, or the first locus of dogmatics in what would become volume 24 of the Standard Bearer.
An Expository Treatment
Having treated God’s oneness and the doctrine of the Trinity in prior articles, he turned his attention to “Our Covenant God” and the doctrine of the covenant. The series itself begins with a discussion of the propriety of treating this subject under the first locus. With that introduction and a discussion of various views of the covenant, he then proceeded over a series of seventeen articles to develop the doctrine of the covenant from Scripture.
His treatment is properly called, therefore, an “exposition” of the doctrine of the covenant and that from Scripture, for that was plainly his intention. In the course of that treatment he discusses the current teaching of Scripture concerning the doctrine of the covenant, illustrating it from passage after passage. He also enters into a detailed discussion of various passages and their bearing on the doctrine of the covenant. This approach makes the material valuable and instructive in its own right.
It is clear from the material that Rev. H. Veldman was concerned especially to set forth the doctrine of the covenant for the young people in the churches, and no doubt also the men who had returned from military service after the second world war.
A Historically Significant Treatment
The material from Rev. Veldman has also a twofold significance historically. In the first place, it is in some respects the first and most extended treatment of the covenant in English in the Protestant Reformed Churches.
Rev. Herman Hoeksema had written on this subject at length in the Standard Bearer in the Dutch language shortly after the split in 1924 and separation after 1926. This material, published in booklet form, became the book De Geloovigen en Hun Zaad (Believers And Their Seed). It was later translated into English and published in the Standard Bearer, beginning in volume 44, 1968, and then was published by the Reformed Free Publishing Association in 1971 in book form.
In 1933, Rev. Hoeksema wrote what was in some respects a sequel to Believers And Their Seed, in a series of articles in the Dutch language which were a response to further writings of Prof. W. Heyns and his view of the covenant which were being promoted in the Christian Reformed Dutch language periodical, De Wachter. Hoeksema’s response was “Het Evangelie of De Jongste Aanval Op De Waarheid Der Souvereine Genade” (The Gospel or The Recent Attack Upon The Truth of Sovereign Grace). This material has not been translated and published.
The result was, in a sense, a certain vacuum in the churches of material on the covenant in English. The younger generation, beginning already in the 1930s, no longer knew Dutch well. The Standard Bearer was bilingual at this point, but much of the material would have been closed to the younger generation. This was increasingly the case as the churches moved into the 1940s and '50s. Rev. Herman Veldman’s exposition was intended exactly to address this problem and to pass the doctrine of the covenant along to the next generation.
In the second place, Rev. H. Veldman was engaged in writing this material beginning in December of 1947 and continuing on into 1948. In the 1930s prior to the war, the Protestant Reformed Churches had had some contact with Dr. K. Schilder of the churches in the Netherlands. During the war a split took place in the Gereformeede Kerken in which Schilder and others were deposed and formed the Liberated churches. The war made it difficult to find out what had happened, except that the doctrine of the covenant stood at the center of the controversy. The Synodical churches, as they are called, of the GKN went in the direction of Dr. Abraham Kuyper’s presumptive regeneration. The Liberated followed Schilder's view. (For a discussion of Kuyper's view and a critique, see chapters 3 and 4 of Believers and Their Seed).
At the time Rev. H. Veldman was writing, the Protestant Reformed Churches were again pursuing contacts with Dr. K. Schilder and his group, particularly in the light of the waves of immigrants coming to Canada and the USA from the Netherlands.
In the summer of 1947, Rev. Herman Hoeksema suffered a stroke which would incapacitate him for months. Shortly after this, K. Schilder came to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in October of 1947. The result was a number of meetings at which the different views of the covenant were discussed. Rev. H. Veldman was part of these discussions. The covenant view of the Liberated was not clear and Schilder himself seemed evasive on a number of points.
This becomes clear from the editorials which were written at the same time as the articles, also in Volume 24 of the Standard Bearer. When Herman Hoeksema was incapacitated, Rev. G. Vos took over the post as editor. His editorials reflect the meetings which had taken place and the concerns arising from them. They address the ambiguity of the Liberated covenant view.
Rev. Veldman, in the articles which follow, reflects this also. On the one hand, Schilder made it clear that he did not want what is called the Heynsian view of the covenant. At the same time he wanted to hold elements of that view. He wanted to teach both a covenant that was unconditional in origin but yet conditional in the establishment of the covenant. The discussion centered also around the promise of the covenant and its objects, particularly the children in baptism. (For a discussion of the Heynsian view of the covenant, see Believers and Their Seed, chapters 1 and 2. Rev. H. Veldman assumes the reader is familiar with this view and the Arminianism inherent in it.)
Rev. Herman Veldman’s articles lay out the Protestant Reformed view of the covenant, particularly in the light of the issues under discussion. Herman Hoeksema, in his book Believers and Their Seed, focused especially on the organic idea of the covenant. Rev. H. Veldman also assumes some familiarity with that viewpoint and focuses more on the fact that the covenant is not a pact or agreement, that the establishment of the covenant is unconditional and that the promise of the covenant is particular.
Sounding a Warning
In the articles, Rev. H. Veldman also sounds a warning which in the light of modern developments, particularly the Federal Vision covenantal heresy, is somewhat prophetic. He warns about the ambiguous use of the term “conditions” which the proponents claimed, in his day to want to use, but in an allegedly non-Arminian sense. He writes at the end of his seventh article:
“The use of terms is highly significant. The primary question is not: How do we interpret various terms? A question of greater importance is: How can they be interpreted? Vague, indefinite, ambiguous terms are exceedingly dangerous. The reason is apparent. The Church of God must fight to preserve the truth once delivered to the saints. The history of the Church of God throughout the ages testifies to this fact. The forces of heresy and the lie are always ready to creep into the Church and work havoc with the Cause of the Lord. Hence, the people of the living God must ever be on the alert against these destructive forces, as they operate within and without. Never must the Church of God surrender one square inch of territory, give the enemy a single opportunity to make an inroad into the Church of God. For this reason the use of terms is highly significant. If we use a term which is ambiguous and permits more than one interpretation the result will invariably be that the wrong interpretation will be adopted in the course of time.
Hence, let us be clear, concise, definite, succinct in our speaking. Let us leave no doubt as to our conception of the truth of the Holy Scriptures. If we mean with the use of the word “condition” that man is a moral-rational being and that he must be active in the things of God’s covenant because it is God Who works in him both to will and to do, let us express ourselves in that manner. Let us discard the use of the word “conditional.” And let us speak of God’s unconditional covenant and our calling within that covenant, not as a condition upon which God’s fellowship may possibly rest, but as the fruit of the irresistible operation, of the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus within our hearts and lives.”
The need for that warning, also for the churches, would shortly show itself in the controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches in 1953 and the troubles leading up to it. The problem with a contractual conditional covenant, in which man fulfills conditions, is that it leads inherently into error. It is simply inconsistent with the truth of sovereign grace. The Federal Vision, which claims K. Schilder as the source of its covenant view is a testimony to this fact.
Editing the Material
The material is taken from pdf files of the Standard Bearer which were produced by using optical character recognition, or OCR. The condition of the material varies somewhat. This is, in part, due to printing techniques in 1948. Corrections had to be made by hand, using a line correction technique which involved pasting in a missing word or corrections. This does not copy well in OCR. The text also was double column and various approaches were used to maintain the two column format. The paper of the original had yellowed and this together with ink blotches has introduced into the pdf version a whole range of misreadings, insertions of multiple periods and other extraneous punctuation, all of which had to be corrected and cleaned up.
The articles have been left in their basic form and reflect that they are articles from a periodical printed over an extended period of time. Rev. H. Veldman, therefore, will often summarize what was said in a preceding article before further pursuing the subject. He also uses the convention of capitalizing the words and pronouns with reference to God or Christ, also in Bible quotations. This has been left largely intact.
Rev Veldman uses very long paragraphs, sometimes running a column and a half. These have been broken up by the editor for the sake of readability on the web. The articles have been given chapter headings by the editor to facilitate posting the material on the web site, as well. These are largely the work of the editor, as is the title of the work as a whole. A few corrections have been introduced, in which it is clear that either Rev. H. Veldman misspoke himself or the proof reader misunderstood the sense. There are a few changes which were also necessitated by the line correction technique and by places where a word or phrase has dropped out. One change which was deliberate, is that Rev. H. Veldman refers to L. Berkhof’s work as Reformed Dogmatics. Current editions of this work are titled Systematic Theology, and the current title is used and the page references correspond to the present editions.
The Appendix
“The Expression 'Sanctified In Christ' In Our Baptism Form” is a speech given by Rev. H. Veldman on April 9, 1948 at First Church, Grand Rapids, MI. It was printed in the Standard Bearer as two articles in the course of Rev. H. Veldman’s series on the covenant. The two articles have been merged into one. The material treats an important issue in its own right but is also intimately connected with the discussions on the covenant which were taking place. The paper which he delivered fills out an aspect of the discussion and was plainly intended to do so. It has therefore been added as an appendix to the series.
Our Covenant God
An Exposition Of The Doctrine
Of The Covenant from Scripture
Contents
Appendix: