Made in Germany? Theology at the Cape of Good Hope in the early 18th century

Abstract

Paul Roux (1665-1723), a French Refugee, arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1688 as one of a larger group of French Huguenots who came via the Netherlands. Together with the famous Reverend Pierre Simond, he was known as a significant champion of the French language in the Cape. The manuscript of a small catechism booklet, a Belijdenis, dated 1743, twenty years after his death, was – according to the title page – written by this same Paul Roux. Up until the present, the genesis of this document, one of the few indigenous theological texts from this time, has remained a mystery. References in secondary literature with regard to its origins are speculative at most, and no comprehensive theological analysis of the document has as yet been carried out. This article proves, for the first time, the relationship between this Belijdenis and both a Dutch catechism of the 17th and 18th centuries, the well-known Korte Schets by Johannes d’Outrein (1662–1722), and the German catechism Erste Wahrheitsmilch für Säuglinge am Alter und Verstand of Friedrich Adolf Lampe (1683–1729). The article demonstrates how d’Outrein’s catechism was used, often verbatim, as a source for the Belijdenis by Paul Roux. However, theological differences between these works, in particular regarding the sequence of divisions and arrangement of questions, are revealed in this provisional theological analysis of Roux’s Belijdenis. A number of the questions posed in earlier studies, for instance regarding the original language of the document, are answered. Evidence of the influence exerted by the Dutch Nadere Reformatie in the Cape during the first half of the 18th century is now substantiated. For Huguenot research in South Africa this means that the line from Calvin via France to the Cape of Good Hope is not as clear cut or as straight as has been stated in some publications.