ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the strong communal dynamic of religious punishment and penitence in the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland with specific reference to the use of public admonition and confession. The exile period from the mid-sixteenth century until the major Beggar victories in Holland in 1572, therefore, constituted the formative period for Dutch Calvinism. The condition of exile also reinforced the need for ecclesiastical autonomy and augmented the communal dynamic of Reformed discipline. The goal of discipline was to produce reconciliation with, and in the presence of, the community of true Christian believers through penitence. As Dutch Calvinist leaders established a system of discipline in lieu of the Catholic sacrament of penance, they created a process that emphasized the centrality of moral purity within the matrix of the religious community. The Protestant rejection of Roman Catholic soteriology had profound implications for the process of discipline, penitence, and reconciliation.
