Kyle Dieleman's book, based on a revision of his 2017 doctoral dissertation, offers a study of the importance of the Sabbath to the theology and practice of the Dutch Reformed Church. It is centrally interested in the extent to which a strict observance of the fourth commandment marked the Dutch Reformed tradition in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dieleman argues that, though strict Sabbatarianism did not characterize the thought of four theologians who influenced that intellectual tradition, in practice, pastors and elders were deeply concerned that Christians attend Reformed services and otherwise behave piously on Sundays. The topic is an excellent one to examine: while the theological question is focused and discrete, its implications in practice touch on some of the most important challenges facing Dutch Reformed pastors.

The Battle for the Sabbath is organized into two parts, devoted to the theology of and regulation of the Sabbath, respectively. The three chapters in part 1 examine relevant writings of John Calvin, Jan a Lasco, Zacharinus Ursinus, and Wilhelmus à Brakel. None of the sixteenth-century authors he examines—Calvin, Lasco, and Ursinus—were Dutch, though each influenced the Dutch Reformed tradition. The only truly Dutch text that he studies, Brakel's Redelijke Godsdienst (translated into English as The Christian's Reasonable Service) appeared in 1700, at the very end of the time period covered here. Dieleman is correct to stress the international influences on the Dutch Reformed tradition. However, he might have included a stronger defense of why chose these works, by documenting their influence either relative to the Dutch Reformed intellectual tradition as a whole or to questions about the Sabbath in particular. He is on solid ground with his inclusion of the Heidelberg Catechism (which shows little concern with the Sabbath). Other works that Dieleman studies, however, were never published in the Low Countries or in Dutch. That point does not invalidate their inclusion but only sparks curiosity about why he consulted this selection, rather than works by Heinrich Bullinger, Reginaldus Donteclock, or Gisbertus Voetius, for instance. Still, his examination gives a good indication of the variety of positions on the Sabbath among Reformed theologians. Further, he is convincing that the three sixteenth-century Reformed authors he studies were concerned about the fourth commandment but were not Sabbatarian in the strict sense that later characterized Brakel's position.

Part 2 includes three chapters that cover the regulation of the Sabbath by provincial synods, classes, and consistories, respectively. For synods and classes, he uses extensive published editions, while in the last chapter he turns to archival records of the consistory in the Overijssel city of Kampen to look at one congregation's Sabbath regulation from 1618 to 1649. In these chapters, he finds that pastors (and elders) spent considerable effort monitoring Sabbath observance. They were especially concerned when church members drank alcohol during and after church services, failed to show up to catechism lessons, and engaged in frivolous and immoral behaviors (like dancing and fornication) on Sundays. Pastors also used the charge of Sabbath desecration to try to shut down Catholic, Lutheran, and Anabaptist services. This is the most fascinating of Dieleman's findings. It seems clear that Reformed pastors’ concern to defend the fourth commandment aimed not just at the behavior of members of their church but became part of their broader campaign to monopolize religious worship in the Dutch Republic. Whether targeting Reformed or non-Reformed, however, church leaders left little record of any discussion of the kind interior piety, or spiritual rest, that concerned theological discussions of the Sabbath. As Dieleman concludes, most Dutch Reformed Protestants were “at best, ignorant of the theological understanding of the Sabbath which the Dutch theological tradition advocated” (228).

Dieleman organizes his book around a top-down framework—from Calvin, through later Reformed thinkers, to regional ecclesiastical bodies, and down to local church councils. He also explains that the Dutch ecclesiastical system was not organized top-down but bottom up. Thus, issues were only discussed at the synods because they had not been resolved at the classes, and issues were only discussed at the classes because they had not been resolved within local congregations. That helps explain why synods and classes mostly handled practical problems about people skipping church or drinking on Sundays more often than they debated the theology of the fourth commandment: their agendas were driven not by theologians, but by daily problems faced by consistories. Dieleman speculates that perhaps frustrations with poor Sabbath observance may have influenced the Nadere Refomatie's more intense Sabbatarianism. That is possible, though it is not mutually incompatible with the scholarly consensus that the Nadere Reformatie's strict Sabbatarianism took inspiration from Puritan and Pietist thinkers abroad.

Dieleman helpfully elucidates many theological implications relating to the theory and practice of the Sabbath in the Reformed tradition. Thinking about the gap he identifies between theology and practice, it may be useful to consider Dieleman's The Battle for the Sabbath alongside Gerald Strauss's Luther's House of Learning (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), which examined the German Lutheran tradition. Both authors demonstrate a chasm between theological goals and outcomes in local congregations. Strauss's book sparked rigorous and fruitful scholarly debates that ultimately enriched the study of early modern European religious culture. Dieleman's book also raises questions about how to measure changes in the theology and practice of the Sabbath that future scholars of the Dutch Reformed tradition could build on as well.