Kornelis Heiko Miskotte

In his dissertation, Miskotte addressed Judaism from a phenomenological perspective and introduced thinkers as Herman Cohen, Max Brod, Franz Rosenzweig, Ernst Bloch, and Martin Buber to the Dutch public. He discussed these Jewish thinkers so extensively and with so much understanding and sympathy that his dissertation became a trusted introduction to Jewish philosophy within the Jewish community. Miskotte argued that Christian missions should not be directed toward the Jews. He regarded Judaism as a form of humanism in which humanity itself, following the views of Rosenzweig, fills the role of its own savior; the danger is that humanity will no longer need God or his Son (since God and reality would essentially coincide). However, he judged the Torah in an entirely positive manner as calling the people of Israel away from heathen veneration of the here and now. In the 1930s, he emerged as a major opponent of National Socialism.

In 1938, Miskotte moved to his fourth pastorate in Amsterdam. Among other things, he was given the task of reaching the unchurched in the south of Amsterdam. His second major phenomenological study, Edda en Thora (1939), a comparison between the German and the Jewish religion over themes such as creation, fate, virtue, etc. He designated Nazism as the "new heathenism" with all the accompanying dangers. Miskotte defined heathenism as a natural or folk religion within which people live out their lives. For Jews and Christians, however, God sets limits to natural religiosity. He published a volume titled Bijbelsch ABC (1941) on the basis of the Bible studies and discussion groups he held in Amsterdam-South. In that volume, he contended that knowledge of certain keywords such as "Doctrine," "Name," "Deed," "Word," "Sanctification," etc. was necessary in order to defend against modern nihilism. Miskotte was revered by believers and nonbelievers alike due to his public resistance to fascism and National Socialism. He also maintained contact with the underground resistance and sheltered several Jewish citizens of Amsterdam.

In 1945, after the Second World War, Miskotte was appointed as an ecclesiastical professor at the University of Leiden, where he taught the history of Reformed theology from the period of orthodoxy until Karl Barth. He established the journal In De Waagschaal during this period. Shortly after the war, he experienced a personal tragedy. After the wedding feast of a Jewish survivor of the war, Miskotte's wife and daughter experienced food poisoning and died.[4] As a consequence, Miskotte's health slowly declined. His third major work was titled When the Gods are Silent.[5] Once again, his work broadly treated the relationship between the God of Israel and heathendom, providing a cultural-critical perspective on the nihilism that emerges after God and the gods have been dispensed with. During his period as a professor, he also advocated for a new edition of the Dutch Reformed Church's hymnbook. He retired due to poor health at the end of 1959.