“Satisfied with the Lord’s All-Sufficiency”: Wilhelmus à Brakel on Joy -- By: Paul M. Smalley

Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 03:2 (Jul 2011)
Article: “Satisfied with the Lord’s All-Sufficiency”: Wilhelmus à Brakel on Joy
Author: Paul M. Smalley


“Satisfied with the Lord’s All-Sufficiency”:
Wilhelmus à Brakel on Joy

Paul M. Smalley

The subject of this article is the theology of Wilhelmus à Brakel, a Reformed Dutch pastor and theologian who lived from the seventeenth to the start of the eighteenth centuries. The title, “Satisfied with the Lord’s All-Sufficiency,” is a phrase taken from Brakel’s own pen (3.370).1 This author does not try to establish that joy is the center of Brakel’s theology, but that it is central. Joy stands among his core concerns and permeates his theology.

The matter of this study is The Christian’s Reasonable Service, the English translation of Brakel’s magnum opus, Redelijke Godsdienst. The phrase, taken from the Dutch translation of Romans 12:1, literally means, “Reasonable Religion” (1.3). This work consists of over 2,400 pages organized in 103 chapters, plus an exposition of redemptive history. It contains only one chapter on spiritual joy, which might suggest that joy held a small place in Brakel’s teaching. But consider the following table of how often various terms for joy appear in Brakel’s text.2 Note that these terms for joy appear throughout all four volumes. Note too that such words are used over 2,400 times by Brakel—almost as many references to joy as there are pages.

Term

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

All
Volumes

Joy

89

265

95

117

566

Joyful

19

60

40

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