De katholiciteit van de kerk als kwaliteit van het christendom. De visies van Herman Bavinck en Hendrikus Berkhof

Samenvatting

The Reformation confessed the catholicity of the protestant churches. The early protestant
confessions countered the accusation of being schismatic by an appeal to the continuity
with the church of all ages and the claim that Rome was a false church. This article analyzes how the catholicity of the church was perceived by two Dutch theologians, Herman Bavinck and Hendrikus Berkhof. There are differences between the two; Bavinck opposed Roman Catholicism, while, three-quarters of a century later, Berkhof welcomed Roman Catholic ecumenical openness. Nevertheless, Berkhof recognized in Bavinck an early representative of the modern turn to catholicity as a qualitative characteristic of Christianity. Both understood the catholicity of the church as a derivative of the catholicity of the Christian faith.