Everything You Need to Know About Being Dutch Reformed
Recently, I appeared on the Reformation Response channel to talk about all things Dutch Reformed tradition. In this video, you’ll hear expanded answers to the following questions:
What Is the Dutch Reformed Tradition?
The Dutch Reformed tradition is simply the Reformation as it came to the Low Countries in the early 1500s. It arrived under heavy persecution as the region was governed by the Holy Roman Empire and then by the king of Spain. The 1550s especially were brutal. Men who wanted training traveled across France to the academy in Geneva and came back as pastors. I outline this history in the introductions to both of my books With Heart and Mouth and Grace Worth Fighting For.
“Dutch Reformed” is really another way of saying “continental Reformed”: the Reformation as it took shape on the European continent, as distinct from the English streams that produced Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist churches.
How Do Dutch Reformed Churches View Scripture and the Confessions?
As I say in This is the Word of the Lord, Scripture is the highest and final authority, and it judges every controversy of faith and life. The Belgic Confession especially emphasizes this (articles 3–7). But the Bible is a big book, and the confessions come alongside it to summarize what it teaches — they are secondary standards, not a second source.
There is a real nuance between us and our Presbyterian friends here. We affirm the Three Forms of Unity because they are biblical, notinsofar as they are biblical. That doesn’t make them unchangeable. Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, on the civil magistrate’s duty to suppress false religion, was changed through the ordinary process of the churches — from a local consistory, to classis, to synod.
What Are the Dutch Reformed Denominations in North America?
Until American independence, the Dutch Reformed churches here were still part of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. Ministers had to be trained there, and a single case of discipline meant a voyage across the Atlantic. It was unworkable, and the American churches eventually severed that jurisdiction.
What had been the original Dutch Reformed Church in America is today the Reformed Church in America. Waves of immigration through the 1800s brought more churches and more divisions, driven partly by upheaval back home — Napoleon rolled through Europe and turned the Dutch church into something close to a department of state. This led to the formation of the Christian Reformed Churches and eventually the group I serve within, the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA). For more on the URCNA, see the book I’ve contributed to: Roots Renewed.
What Must a Christian Believe to Be Saved?
Our Heidelberg Catechism asks exactly that: “What then must a Christian believe?” The answer is “All that is promised us in the gospel, a summary of which is taught us in the articles of our catholic and undoubted Christian faith”—that is, the Apostles’ Creed (Q&A 22). So the answer is the gospel — put your hope and trust in Jesus Christ alone and in his finished work. It is no different from the answer given to the Philippian jailer.
That means we gladly affirm that God has believers scattered across the world in every kind of denomination. As Augustine put it, there are many goats within the church and many sheep outside it.
How Is a Person Justified Before God?
Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 60 asks, “How you are righteous before God?” and it answers: “Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.” We’re justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. This is why I wrote How Can Justification Make Me Joyful?
Good works have no part in justification, but they are part of the overall work of salvation as the outflow of a justified person. Scripture speaks of salvation in three tenses. I was saved, which is justification. I am being saved, which is sanctification, as God transforms me from one degree of glory to another. And I will be saved, which is glorification, when this body is made like Christ’s glorious body.
Do Dutch Reformed Churches Believe in Baptismal Regeneration?
No. If you mean that a child or a convert is regenerated at the moment of baptism, we say no — and this is one of the reasons there are Lutherans and Calvinists rather than one Protestant church. As an aside, for why we baptize babies, see Jesus Loves the Children.
Baptism is a means of grace by which God sets a person apart, places the sign of his covenant on them, and preaches the gospel to them in a tangible way. As for when it becomes effective, our tradition’s answer is essentially this: God is sovereign. The Spirit blows where he wills. He can regenerate an infant before birth — John the Baptist — during baptism, or after baptism even up to the moment of death.
Is the Lord’s Supper Just a Memorial?
Of course we remember Christ’s death and resurrection — every Christian does, because that’s what Jesus said to do. But we mean considerably more than remembrance.
We reject transubstantiation, nor do we say with the Lutherans that Christ’s body and blood are “in, with, and under the bread.” We do affirm real presence. The Supper is a means of grace, Christ is present with us, and we truly partake of his body and blood — by the power of the Holy Spirit, received through faith. But as John Calvin said, we have no shame in admitting it’s better to experience communion than to understand it.
Nothing different happens in the sacrament than happens in preaching. God offers himself to us in Christ, whether in words, in water, or in bread and wine, and faith receives the promise and makes it its own.
What Is the Church in Dutch Reformed Theology?
We speak of the church as visible and invisible, and as an organization and an organism. The organization is real and tangible — ministers, elders, deacons, assemblies of churches, confessions, liturgy, sacraments. That’s why I wrote A Well-Ordered Church.
But when the service ends, the church doesn’t stop existing. It extends into the world through its members. You are still part of the body of Christ at work, or at the doctor, or at your kid’s game. Holding both together keeps us from over-prioritizing the institution, and equally from the impulse to ditch organized religion and just “be the church.”
Are Female Pastors Allowed in Dutch Reformed Churches?
Not historically nor in groups of churches like my own. The URCNA holds to male ordination, and so do I. A woman preaching, baptizing, or administering the Lord’s Supper is, in our judgment, unbiblical. At best, it’s a less pure, even impure, administration of the sacrament.
That said, we exercise a judgment of charity about the sacrament itself. If someone comes to Oceanside URC having been baptized in the name of the Triune God — whether in a non-denominational, more liberal church with female pastors, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox church — we don’t re-baptize them. A pastor ordinarily administers the sacrament, but ultimately it is God who does the work. The exception would be a baptism where the God confessed is not the Triune God at all, such as a Mormon baptism.
What Is the Strongest Argument Against Being Dutch Reformed?
Honestly, the strongest objection I meet is not theological, it’s a practical American one. Here in Southern California, people rarely object to being Reformed. They object that the worship is too liturgical and too formal. We don’t meet in an industrial building with dramatic lighting and a band. We have a hymnal and a printed liturgy, and some Sundays I am in a robe or a collar.
We had a visitor stop coming recently. One of our elders reached out to ask why, and the answer was: “You guys read the Bible too much and there’s too much prayer.” That’s an extreme case, but it points at the real obstacle. There’s a reverence and a seriousness to Reformed worship that a lot of people simply are not used to.
Where Should I Start Learning About the Dutch Reformed Tradition?
Start with the Three Forms of Unity, all freely available at threeforms.org. Read the Belgic Confession first — it’s topical and straightforward, moving from God and Scripture through Christ, the church, the sacraments, and the last things. Then the Heidelberg Catechism, in question and answer, which runs from comfort to sin to grace to gratitude. While I love the Canons of Dort, save the Canons of Dort for last; it’s the hardest of the three, and this is why I wrote Grace Worth Fighting For to help people work through it.
For an entry point, my own Welcome to a Reformed Church: A Guide for Pilgrims is used by Reformed churches across the landscape for exactly this purpose (see here for all my books). And if you want one substantial book, read Herman Bavinck’s The Wonderful Works of God — a one-volume Reformed systematic theology written in the early 1900s for young professionals reading on the trolley to work. It is narratival and scriptural rather than technical.
What Would I Miss by Never Becoming Dutch Reformed?
Besides the cool last names and Dutch mints, obviously?
But the real answer is the comfort. The Heidelberg Catechism opens by asking, “What your only comfort in life and in death?” The whole tradition flows out of that answer. Plenty of Christians use the Heidelberg now — Presbyterians, and even Reformed Baptists — precisely because it is so Christ-centered and so assuring. You can find that in other places. But this is where it flows from.
Got questions? Contact me.
And don’t forget to check out my books, articles, and teachings.
On the Three Forms of Unity: