The Way to Heaven

Catechisms and Sermons in the Establishment of the Dutch Reformed Church in the East Indies

Thianto

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878481
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book explores the introduction and transplantation of Calvinism to the Dutch East Indies in the seventeenth century through close analysis of the earliest Malay translations of Reformed catechisms and printed sermons written by Dutch ministers working in the archipelago. This book shows how these ministers introduced, taught, and explained the main teachings of Calvinism to the people of the Dutch East Indies in a language they could understand, as well as the challenges these ministers encountered as they moved forward in their efforts to spread the gospel to the people.

1

The Place of Catechism in the Transplantation of Calvinism in the East Indies

Sovrat ABC as the Earliest Reformed Catechetical Material in the East Indies

In 1611 the VOC published a small primer intended to be used in schools to teach children in the East Indies how to read and write. The title of this printed material is: Sovrat ABC, Akan meng ayd jer anack boudack sepercy deayd ‘jern ‘ja capada segala manusia Nassarany: daen berbagy sombahayang Christiaan.43 In English, this title means, “ABC Letter, Intended to Teach Young Children the Same Material Intended for All Christians, and Some Christian Prayers.” As the title page indicates, this primer was to be used to provide the basic teachings of Christianity. The title page also indicates that the content of this little book is the same as the content of the teaching of the Christian faith taught to Christians in different parts of the world. Even though this little book was published by the Dutch whose theological standpoint was Calvinism, the book still claims that the content of its teaching is universal. Even though this primer was not written in a format of questions and answers commonly used in a more formal catechism such as the Heidelberg Catechism, it fits within the genre of catechism, for, as Robert Bast claims, beginning from the sixteenth century the term “catechism” was used as “a technical term for a genre of didactic religious literature.”44

The book does not mention the name of the author. John Landwehr attributes the book to Albert Ruyl.45 There is no dedicatory epistle accompanying the publication of this small book. Landwehr’s attribution of this work to Ruyl is based on the forewords that Ruyl wrote in the publication of another catechetical work published 1612, the Malay translation of Philip van Marnix’s small catechism that Ruyl translated into Malay as Spieghel van de Maleysche Tale.46 In the foreword of the Spieghel Ruyl mentions that in the year preceding the publication of this book, he had translated another work by van Marnix entitled “A. B Boek” from low Dutch into Malay.47 Considering that the Spieghel was translated in 1612, and the other smaller catechism book was published in 1611 with the main title Sovrat ABC, we can be certain that this small work was also translated by Ruyl.

The Sovrat ABC was published, first of all, to teach young children to read and write. This primer starts with a list of the alphabet printed in several different fonts. There are seven kinds of fonts included in the first page of this book, either in lower case or upper case.48 This list of the alphabet was very likely intended to teach school children to learn their ABCs, as the title of the whole work indicates. The next part of the book is dedicated to the study of vowels and the combination of vowels and consonants. Following the lesson on the alphabet, the Sovrat ABC has the Malay translation of the Ten Commandments.49 The title given to this section is Sabda Allah ta-Allah jang Sapoulo Percara, or “The Words of God of All Gods in Ten Items.” This Malay translation of the title Ten Commandments may sound cumbersome when translated into modern English, however, for the indigenous people in the East Indies in the early years of the seventeenth century, this rather long title was necessary to teach them what the Ten Commandments actually are. It seems that Ruyl was trying to show the people that these words are God’s words. In addition, the name Allah ta-allah, or “God of All Gods,” indicates that Ruyl was setting Reformed Christianity against other religions. Thus, Ruyl indirectly showed that Reformed Christianity is the only true religion. The inclusion of the Ten Commandments as the first text in this small catechetical material intended as teaching material for young children gives us the impression that Ruyl considered the Ten Commandments as the most important text that children as well as adults of the East Indies must know.

Ruyl included the biblical reference to this text. “Exodus 20” is printed underneath the main title. It is worth noting here that at the time when the Sovrat ABC was first published, the people in the East Indies still did not have the Bible in their vernacular. The first Malay translation of the Gospel of Matthew, also done by Ruyl, was published in 1629.50 The entire Old and New Testament Bible was only published in Malay more than a century later, in 1733.51 Because the complete Bible was only translated into Malay at a much later time, we can consider the printing of the text of the Ten Commandments, including the Bible reference of Exodus 20, as the earliest printing of a biblical text in Malay for the people.

The placing of the Ten Commandments as the first religious instruction in the Sovrat ABC fits within the overall program of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. As Bast’s work has shown us, the sixteenth-century Reformers followed their medieval predecessors in using the Ten Commandments as a basic instruction in faith and morality.52 The earliest Dutch ministers who went to the East Indies followed their sixteenth-century predecessors in advancing the same idea. The Ten Commandments should be taught to the little children in the East Indies, in the language that they could easily understand, so that they too could receive basic instruction in faith and morality.

Following the text of the Ten Commandments, the Sovrat ABC has the text of the Apostles’ Creed.53 The title given to the creed in Malay is Segala bagy capalang dary agama heakiman Christan, meaning “All Headings of the Belief of the Christian Religion.” Ruyl did not use the term “Apostles’ Creed” perhaps for the reason that it would confuse the people. What the people needed was to know the content of the creed, the statement of their faith. The Malay term capalang or sometimes capala means “head.” In the vocabulary list that Ruyl included at the end of his Spieghel, he clearly states that the word capala is the synonym for the Dutch word hooft.54 Thus, the Malay title for the Apostle’s Creed is to communicate that these twelve articles are to be understood as the head or the most important points of the beliefs of the Christian religion. In the title Ruyl used, the Malay word heakiman was the synonym for the Dutch word ghelooven in the vocabulary list at the end of the Spieghel.55 In the translation of the Apostles’ Creed Ruyl used the first-person singular pronoun hamba to tran...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Place of Catechism in the Transplantation of Calvinism in the East Indies
• Chapter 2: The Sermons of Wiltens and Danckaerts as Tools for the Early Establishment of Calvinism in the East Indies
• Chapter 3: The Sermons of Franchois Caron as Further Reinforcement of the Establishment of Calvinism in the East Indies
• Chapter 4: Intersection of Doctrine and Christian Conducts in Caron’s Sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer
• Chapter 5: Transfer of Reformed Religious Concepts in the East Indies
• Conclusion
• Bibliography