Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. Back in seminary I had a professor named Dr. Richard Gaffin and he liked to say if you don't know Dutch you don't know much. Well it dawned on me that here at five minutes we haven't been

talking a great deal about the Dutch theologians and I certainly don't want to run

counter to my wise seminary professor's statement so we will try to set the record a little straight

and we will at least know a little Dutch, or perhaps better, a little bit about one Dutchman

named Herman Bovink. Herman Bovink was born in 1854.

His father was a minister in the secession

Dutch Christian Reform Church.

This was different from the National Dutch Christian Reformed Church,

and that was the church context, the church family in which Bovink was nurtured in the faith

and came of age. When he was ready to attend university, he decided that he would go on for his seminary studies at the Secession Seminary at Campin in the Netherlands.

He studied there for a year and then he went on to the University of Leiden. He distinguished himself

as a scholar and received many invitations as a pastor to some of the cosmopolitan churches

and also to some of the great universities in the Netherlands, but he decided

he would take a church in his secession denomination.

And so from 1880 to 1883 he had his first pastorate. In 1883 he answered the call to become a professor at

Campin. He thought it would be his work to go there to the seminary and train the ministers that would be coming up in the secession

Dutch Christian Reformed Church denomination.

And he was there from 1883 until 1902. While he was there, he was there from 1883 until 1992.

While he was there, he worked on his Magnum Opus, his four-volume reform dogmatics.

Now when it comes to the reformed part, for Bauvink to be reformed means to believe in the sovereignty

of God, to believe in humanity's need, and for Christ as our Savior, and to believe in the inerancy and the infallibility of scripture.

Now what do we do with the dogmatics part? The word dogma means teaching and so

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