Herman Hoeksema
Herman Hoeksema
Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965), a Dutch
Reformed
theologian, was born in the Netherlands
and immigrated to the USA in 1904. After studying at Calvin
Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he began his
ministerial career in the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church
of Grand Rapids - at that time one of the largest reformed
congregations in the United States.
Hoeksema was one of the principal founders of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). Founded as a separate denomination of Reformed churches in 1924, the PRC stand in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Their origin as a denomination was the doctrinal controversy over "common grace" within the Christian Reformed Church in the early 1920s, occasioned by that church's adoption of the doctrine of common grace as official church dogma. The result of the controversy was that several ministers with their congregations were put out of the Christian Reformed Church. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches.
The newly-formed PRC denomination established the Protestant Reformed Seminary where Hoeksema served as professor of theology for 40 years.
Selected works
- Reformed Dogmatics, 2 vols, 2nd edition. Reformed Free Publishing, 2005.
- The Triple Knowledge: An Exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism, 3 vols. Reformed Free Publishing, 1990.