Theopedia

Herman Witsius

Herman Witsius (1636-1708) was a Dutch Reformed theologian and pastor who taught successively at the universities of Franeker, Utrecht, and Leiden.1 He is best known for his Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man (1677), a major work of Reformed federal theology that argues the covenant of grace, promised at Genesis 3:15, progressively unfolds across five stages of redemptive history.2 Writing amid the Dutch church’s Voetian-Cocceian controversy over method, Witsius followed Johannes Cocceius’s more exegetical approach while still holding the covenant of works common to Reformed orthodoxy generally, a position that put him at odds with neither party entirely.3

Life and Ministry

Witsius was born in 1636 at Enkhuizen, North Holland, and studied at the universities of Utrecht, Leiden, and Groningen.1 He was ordained to the ministry and served as pastor successively at Westwoud from 1656, then at Wormer, Goes, and Leeuwarden.1 In 1675 he was appointed professor of divinity at the University of Franeker, having already been favored for a professorship there some years earlier, when the faculty chose him over Peter van Mastricht for an opening.4 In 1680 he succeeded Franz Burman, who had died the previous November, as professor of divinity at the University of Utrecht.5 In 1698 he moved to the University of Leiden as successor to the younger Friedrich Spanheim, where he remained until his death in 1708.1

Theological Contribution

Witsius’s chief work, originally published in Latin as De oeconomia foederum Dei cum hominibus (Leeuwarden, 1677) and known in English as The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man: Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity, was occasioned by his grief over the controversy dividing the Dutch Reformed church between the followers of Gisbertus Voetius and those of Johannes Cocceius.1 Voetius, a Reformed scholastic and professor at Utrecht, represented the mature fruit of the Dutch Further Reformation; Cocceius, who taught at Franeker and Leiden, argued for replacing the prevailing scholastic method of theology with what he considered a more directly Scriptural one, organized around the historical unfolding of God’s covenants rather than a fixed set of scholastic loci.3 Louis Berkhof records that Witsius, along with Franciscus Burmannus, followed Cocceius in that methodological preference, while still affirming the covenant of works doctrine that Voetius, Peter van Mastricht, Johannes à Marck, and Bernhardinus de Moor also held.3 Witsius’s own book did not, in the end, fully satisfy either party.1

In the Economy of the Covenants, Witsius traces the covenant of grace, first promised at Genesis 3:15, as unfolding progressively across five successive stages of redemptive history: from Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham, Abraham to Moses, Moses to Christ, and finally the New Testament era.2 The work also addresses the doctrine of the covenant of works before the fall; unlike John Owen, Francis Turretin, William Ames, and several other Reformed theologians who described that pre-fall covenant itself as an expression of divine grace, Witsius held with Charles Hodge and Johannes Heidegger that “grace” was not the right category for God’s dealings with an as-yet unfallen Adam.6 On the image of God in man, Witsius offered a threefold formula that Berkhof cites as representative of the broader Reformed position: “The image of God consisted antecedenter, in man’s spiritual and immortal nature; formaliter, in his holiness; consequenter, in his dominion.”7

Beyond the Economy, Witsius’s other works included Judaeus christianizans circa principia fidei et SS. Trinitatem (Utrecht, 1661), directed against Jewish objections to the Trinity; Diatribe de septem epistolarum apocalypticarum sensu historico et prophetico (Franeker, 1678), on the seven letters of Revelation; Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum quod apostolorum dicitur et in orationem Dominicam (Franeker, 1681), on the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer; and the two-volume Miscellanea sacra (Utrecht, 1692-1700).1 In the Economy itself, Witsius argued against Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, and Socinianism.1 Herman Bavinck groups Witsius, along with Richard Baxter, Wilhelmus à Brakel, and Willem Schortinghuis, among the representatives of a practical, piety-oriented strand within Reformed orthodoxy that reacted against a purely scholastic approach to theology.8

Historical Significance

Witsius’s covenant theology found a direct hearing among the Particular Baptists: Daniel Scheiderer notes that Benjamin Keach, “like his contemporary Herman Witsius,” maintained that covenant theology touches on multiple doctrines of the Christian faith rather than standing as an isolated topic, citing the 1837 Crookshank English translation of the Economy of the Covenants.9 The Voetian-Cocceian controversy that shaped Witsius’s own career continued to divide Dutch Reformed theological faculties for years after his death, with many cities eventually settling into a practice of rotating pastors between the two parties.1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. “Witsius, Herman,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911); “Witsius, Hermann,” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1914), both public-domain references not held in the Theopedia Library, used here for biographical facts (education, ministry posts, dates, the occasion and reception of his chief work) not otherwise found in library sources. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. Carol Man Fen Chen, “Biblical Covenants in the Old Testament,” in “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), citing Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man: Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 1:313-16. ↩ ↩2

  3. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 197. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Adriaan C. Neele, “Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706): Life and Work,” in Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), 36. ↩

  5. Neele, “Life and Work,” 38. ↩

  6. Micah John McCormick, “Adam’s Obedience for Eternal Life Before the Fall,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 129, citing Mark Jones, “John Owen on the Covenant of Works.” ↩

  7. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 191. ↩

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 17, “The Order of Salvation.” ↩

  9. Daniel David Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 33, citing Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man: Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity, trans. William Crookshank, 2 vols. (London: T. Tegg & Son, 1837). ↩