Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrugge, or Kohlbrügge was a Dutch minister.
Background
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrugge grew up in Amsterdam. His father was a native German and he and his family attended the Lutheran church in the Netherlands. Soon after his father died, he fulfilled a promise to his father and committed to studying theology.
Education
Kohlbrugge eventually graduated and wrote a dissertation on Psalm 45, calling this Psalm a wedding song for Christ and his people.
Career
Hermann excelled at school and was allowed to the study of Arts at the University of Utrecht. At the time he was allowed to preach in church, he stumbled upon a great difference between the sermons of his colleague preachers and the Reformed tradition. He was refused admission to that church, because the synod feared he would raise protests there as well.
Before his death, he was granted permission to preach in Dutch churches as well.
In 1833, during the preparation of one of his sermons in Elberfeld, Germany, Kohlbrugge stumbled upon the phrase in Romans 7 where Paul states that the law is spiritual, and man is flesh, a slave to sin. This chapter in the Bible became a guiding principle for Kohlbrugge"s theology.
During his whole life (in which he lived both in Germany and the Netherlands), he strongly emphasized the importance of salvation in Christ. Manitoba cannot save himself from sin and evil, since he is nothing more than "flesh": only Christ can save him.
This theology, he claimed, is exactly what Paul, Luther, and Calvin preached.
Kohlbrugge preached this gospel so radically that most of his fellow theologians strongly objected to him, accusing him of either ignoring the scientific and moral gains of the Enlightenment, or ignoring and refusing God"s law.
Membership
After permission to the German church was refused him as well, he returned to Holland where he lived without being a member of any denomination. But he wrote books and had church services of his own in his house.