Johannes d'Outrein (1662-1722) en zijn emblematische Schriftuitleg

Abstract

This is the first monograph-length study on Johannes d’Outrein (1662-1722). With the exception of several (admittedly not insignificant) publications on aspects of his theology, as well as a number of brief entries in biographical dictionaries, there is as yet no extensive description of his life and work. The fact that he left behind a corpus of more than 50 works which still find a (limited) readership today calls for a deeper examination of his thought. The present study will attempt to fill this gap, and in the process address the following main question: what kind of a theologian was Johannes d’Outrein? Johannes d’Outrein numbered among the followers of the renowned seventeenth-century theologian Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669). This does not mean that he slavishly followed him in everything, however, for on certain points clearly opted for a direction of his own. While ‘history’ was an important element in Cocceius’s prophetic exegesis, in D’Outrein’s theology this position was occupied by the theme of ‘creation’. The difference between them can be traced back above all to D’Outrein’s knowledge of and fascination with emblematism, which he applied in his exegetical method. At the time, Cocceian theologians were engaging in both prophetic as well as allegorical exegesis. While a dictionary of emblems was composed by a number of these Cocceians, none of them actually provided a theological defence of the emblematic exegetical method. This was left for D’Outrein to do in his Proefstukken van Heilige Sinnebeelden (1700), giving this work a unique place in the history of Dutch Reformed theology. In the Proefstukken D’Outrein describes both emblematism in general as well as the emblematism as it occurs in Scripture. In the course of this work, he distinguishes ten different forms of biblical allegory. The Proefstukken also includes fourteen sample sermons which D’Outrein gave in order to demonstrate how allegorical exegesis can be applied in preaching. D’Outrein’s understanding that many words in the Bible have an allegorical meaning – in his view, this too formed a part of the text’s sensus literalis – offered him and his fellow Cocceians a way to accept the results of empirical study without any problems. Accordingly, the Cocceians did not understand Copernican heliocentrism to conflict with Scripture. The fact that allegorical exegesis made the assumption of this position possible offers one explanation as to why Cartesianism and Cocceianism so often went hand in hand.