Dutch evangelical trends and their significance: A critical review article

There has long been a distinction between Reformed and evangelical theology in the Netherlands, but in our global intellectual culture, English-language evangelical trends are influencing the shape of the Dutch speaking evangelical world. Two recent books published in the Netherlands highlight this shift. The collection Evangelical Theology in Transition, edited by Cornelis van der Kooi, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman and Arie W. Zwiep, points the way forward for Dutch Evangelicalism with application to the Evangelical church and theology internationally. The new textbook of systematic theology by Gijsbert van den Brink and Cornelis van der Kooi, Christelijke dogmatiek, is an ecumenically minded, classical trinitarian, Reformed dogmatic theology. Both books represent a progressive, broadly focused, evangelical and Reformed theology in Dutch speaking Europe. This critical review article investigates highlights of these works for the continuing strength and growth of evangelicalism in the Low Countries, and its implications for the global evangelical movement.