From Higher Criticism to Marxism: The Treasonous Behavior of the South African Dutch Reformed Churches Towards the Afrikaner People

Theological liberalism, as we know it, is generally thought to have begun in Germany in the nineteenth century, with its most notable proponent being Friedrich Schleiermacher. This is true in the sense that the ideas of higher and lower biblical criticism had not been openly professed and propagated before the likes of Schleiermacher, Westcott, and Hort at that time.¹ However, liberalism’s historical roots in Protestantism lie a little deeper, most notably in Reformed orthodoxy, where, for example, one Christoph Wittich was the first Calvinist theologian to propagate the so-called Akkomodationstheorie. Descartes arrived at this theory after concluding from his second meditation that, while God is not an absolute malicious deceiver, He still at times might have spoken falsely in the Scripture; accordingly, reason alone can liberate man from any possible error of an omnipotent God.² Wittich was first among the Reformed scholastics to incorporate this into his understanding of the authority of special revelation.

These developments never had a particularly significant impact on the Reformed Churches in South Africa until they were propagated by John Du Plessis (1868-1935), a former lecturer in theology at the University of Stellenbosch. Du Plessis was heavily influenced by the Wesleyanism of Rev. Andrew Murray and the biblical criticism of the liberal Dutch theologians Doedes and Van Oosterzee. During a class-sermon in 1892 on II Cor. 4:7 at Stellenbosch, where Du Plessis studied, he noted: “our faith rests on no external authority: it rests upon neither errorless Bible nor infallible Church.” This statement is one of the earliest indications of Du Plessis’s alliance with modernism. He was not indoctrinated in this historical-critical exegetical method by his mentors, but came under its influence by his own studies, as evidenced from the commentary of his professor Hofmeyr on the above statement: “This must be modified.” In 1905, he became editor of Die Kerkbode, which is also today one of the most deceptive and anti-Christian Afrikaans publications around. J.D. Du Toit, being of the more conservative Gereformeerde Maandblad, opposed Du Plessis.³ Du Toit also argued in favor of using the Textus Receptus, rather than the lower-critical text of Westcott and Hort, for the translation of the New Testament into Afrikaans a few decades later, due to the providential preservation of these mostly Byzantine-type texts. However, Du Toit’s excessive love for the Jews (inherited from his father’s idolization of the tribe), unfortunately, led him to also support the use of the corrupted, Talmudic Hebrew text for the translation of the Old Testament in favor of the Septuagint. One of the resultant errors was his rejection of the explicit prophecy of Christ in Isaiah 7:14.⁴ Du Plessis consistently applied his erroneous epistemology when he also opposed the first apartheid legislation implemented in 1913.

When a friend of Du Plessis, Rev. Meiring, became editor of Die Kerkbode in 1923, it once again gave Du Plessis a platform with which to propagate his ideas. One of Du Plessis’s major opponents would turn out to be Dwight Snyman, who studied in the United States and was heavily influenced by J. Gresham Machen. Snyman accepted a call to a congregation in Stellenbosch in 1927, and in February 1928, he helped to formulate the official complaints against Du Plessis’s heresies on behalf of the church curatorium. The heresies included the Akkommodationstheorie (i.e. the doctrine that Scripture’s historical narratives can be erroneous) and an implicit denial of the divinity of Christ by overriding His claims regarding the historicity of the tale of Jonah (Matt. 12:40) and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (Mark 10:3-8). The synod found Du Plessis guilty, but the presbytery of Stellenbosch supported him and, unfortunately, so did the civil court when the matter was eventually taken up there. Du Plessis, however, was not to continue lecturing in Stellenbosch after 1930, but he had a loyal following among many students. His ideas sent the Dutch Reformed Church on an irreversible course.⁵

Higher criticism gradually took over the Dutch Reformed theological faculties in all of South Africa, which led to its eventual treason against the Boer people. Before getting there, however, it should first be noted that the denomination which mainly opposed higher criticism in South African theological circles, the Reformed Churches in South Africa, also officially announced its hatred for the Boer people in 1991,⁶ albeit through a different path. The Reformed Churches in South Africa followed Totius’s Judeo-Christian pietism and the sociological errors of his tutor, Abraham Kuyper, and thus ended up committing the very same treason, officially announcing its support for South Africa’s Marxist government at its 2006 synod.⁷

By his application of higher criticism and consequent spurning of the historicity of the creation and fall of man, Du Plessis paved the way for the church’s rejection of the doctrines of creation and original sin, a heresy that logically denies the mediatorship of Christ and, in the long run, also enabled Marxism to take over the church. When I started my theological studies at the university as a nineteen-year-old in 2008, one of the first heresies I was taught was that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are mythological; and once these historical narratives, from the seven-day creation of man to the tower of Babel, were rejected as premises, the professors could basically sell any Marxist dream to the students. First and foremost, a historical Redeemer is not necessary to redeem man from a mythological fall, so the resurrection of Christ can be doubted – as can all the Old Testament prophecies of Him as the Messiah, since the first one (Gen. 3:15) is mythologized as well. This heresy, in turn, paves the way for Arianism and antinomianism, since it maintains a complete discontinuity between the two testaments. And furthermore, the cultural and revolutionary Marxism taught in the Belhar confession also rests almost solely on the rejection of the doctrines derived from the narratives of creation, the fall, and Babel (Acts 17:26-27), in favor of a narrative fostering white guilt. David Heleniak’s observations regarding the Episcopal Church in the United States during the 60s are just as applicable to the Reformed Churches in South Africa in the 90s:

[I]n the 60s, Nietzsche’s death of God caught up to the Episcopalians who made up the American ruling class. They could no longer believe the old mythologies: Adam and Eve, original sin, blood atonement, all that medieval bs. But they couldn’t give up the religion that they grew up in, with the community fellowship, the memories of church hayrides, etc. So they looked in the mirror and said: “What can I feel guilty about, now that I’ve rejected the reality of Adam’s sin, so I can keep being a Christian. Aha. I’m white, male, and Christian. I will feel guilty for being white, male, and Christian.”⁸

This false confession of sin is what drives a great deal of the Reformed ecclesiastical world in South Africa, as it does in many other parts of the West. By accepting this confession, church leaders have openly declared their opposition to the real and personal edification and sanctification of the nations, which Christ commanded His church to accomplish (Matt. 28:19), and they stand opposed to any real progress to be made by the white race, to whom a particular task was endowed by God in having dominion over creation (Gen. 9:27).

And so the church has bowed the knee to both gender and racial egalitarianism, such that it is virtually impossible to become an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church today without verbally embracing homosexuality, female ordination, and alienism. Today, following in the footsteps of its leaders from the early 90s, Heyns and Jonker, the family of Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa are essentially unmatched in their prideful, presumptuous hatred for the white race in general and the Afrikaner people in particular. Recently, even the most conservative professor from my school’s theological faculty apologized on behalf of the Afrikaner people for what happened at Bloedrivier and during apartheid⁹ – publicly humiliating the very people God has providentially entrusted to carry the gospel into Southern Africa for the sanctification of the peoples there for over 300 years. This is merely one of countless contemporary examples of how the church actively opposes not only Afrikanerdom, but, by shamelessly siding with Marxism, all of Christendom.

A few voices have been raised against the Marxism of the mainline Dutch Reformed Church, such as the formation of the Afrikaans Protestant Church in 1987, a church for conservative Afrikaners. No real, effective alternatives or praiseworthy polemics have been offered by the APC, unfortunately, which itself (though not nearly as bad as the DRC) has been greatly corrupted by the heresies of gospel-sanctification, radical two-kingdom theology, and biblical criticism. However, in another very recent – and positive – development, a number of congregations associated with a theologically conservative movement known as the SteedsHervormers (StillReformers) disaffiliated from the Dutch Reformed (Hervormde) Church, due to the denomination’s theological liberalism and postmodernism.¹⁰ Yet, even though the authority of Scripture is rightly the primary reason for their secession, it remains to be seen whether they can rid themselves of all the distortions that accompany the amillenial eschatology which is so characteristic of the South African Reformed Churches in the Dutch tradition, such as the ridiculous yet common idea that it is wrong to “preach politics.”

The Reformed Churches in South Africa are largely apostate, and, while some congregations are better than others and contain some true regenerates, it would make perfect sense for any Reformed, theonomic, Bible-believing Afrikaner not to attend an institutional church and submit his family to its church discipline. As it is a biblical command to regularly gather for worship and fellowship on the Lord’s Day, however (I Cor. 16:1-2; Heb. 10:25), we cannot be content with merely practicing our religion within our respective private residences. The remnant must actively seek out one another and continually pray to God to raise up legitimate and godly ministers and elders, so that the true church might once again become visible among the Boer people of today – so that we, as a nation, may be sanctified to His glory and be a light unto the world.

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