Malan regularly received illustrious visitors, such as the Stellenbosch seminary’s professors Marais, Moorrees and De Vos, as well as other prominent clergymen.[71] In 1911, his church council managed to find him an assistant preacher, the young Dr E.E. van Rooyen, who would later be appointed to the Stellenbosch seminary in 1920. Like Malan, Van Rooyen was quiet and studious and, like Malan, he had graduated from a Dutch university – the Free University of Amsterdam – with a philosophical topic: Hume’s scepticism. When Professor J.W. Pont, who had known both men during their respective times of study in the Netherlands, heard that they lived under the same roof, he wondered aloud: ‘What would they have been silent about!’[72] On Mondays, the family would picnic in the veld, and Malan himself found it comical that Van Rooyen would slip away in order to study.[73] Van Rooyen was also an advocate for the use of Afrikaans as opposed to English and Dutch, and would later participate in the translation of the Bible into Afrikaans.[74] In spite of this common interest, the two men were on opposite sides of the theological spectrum. In later years, Van Rooyen would be among those who persecuted Johannes du Plessis for practising Higher Criticism.[75]
Van Rooyen represented a leaning in the DRC’s theology towards Abraham Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism, while Malan was a liberal theologian – precisely the type that Van Rooyen and his allies wanted to exorcise. Malan, as one of the last South African theological students to have graduated from the University of Utrecht – which was considered a liberal institution – and the protégé of one of Kuyper’s main theological opponents, practised a theology that was similar to that of Du Plessis, who was a renowned theologian and who would later become a professor at the Stellenbosch seminary. Like Du Plessis, Malan practised Higher Criticism and was sympathetic towards the theory of evolution, believing that some biblical events, such as the story of Jonah, were symbolic and did not actually take place. These theological practices brought charges of heresy upon Du Plessis that were driven by graduates from Kuyper’s Free University of Amsterdam, as well as those from Princeton, which also taught a fundamentalist approach to the Scriptures and rejected the distinction between sanctifying knowledge and those passages that were purely historical.[76]
During Malan’s years in the church, Du Plessis organised theological symposiums that were considered controversial by the DRC’s rank and file. Malan took part in at least two of these symposiums – one of which was held in Montagu.[77] In a paper that he delivered on Higher Criticism, Valeton’s influence was indisputable. Malan was also an Ethical theologian who believed that the history of Israel’s religion was God’s means of revealing truth to his followers. Malan asserted that not all tales in the Bible were historically true – the tale of Jonah was an allegory, for instance, in which the fish symbolised the Assyrian mother and Jonah represented Israel, swallowed by the larger power because it had been unfaithful to its calling. As far as Malan was concerned, there was an important distinction between fact and truth: the story of Jonah, like Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, might not have been factual, but it was spiritually true. Malan could see no reason why the Holy Spirit would not have made use of tools such as allegories, legends and myths to convey religious and moral truths – and why the fact that such tales were not literally true diminished their value as part of God’s revelation. He believed that they formed an important part of the study of theology, which had to change along with the times – especially as new methods and new truths were presented by contemporary scholarship. If not, theology was at risk of becoming a field that was merely of antiquarian interest. Therefore, according to Malan, Higher Criticism – which was a product of the field of literary criticism – made an important contribution to the study of the Old Testament.[78]
In spite of these assertions, the sermons that Malan presented to his congregation did not contain such exposés, even though his congregants initially complained that his sermons went over their heads.[79] His surviving sermons were more of a moral nature, although they certainly did not lack clarity and argument. One, in particular, drew much attention and approval. In September 1910, Malan delivered a sermon entitled ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ The title of the sermon was taken from God’s question to Cain, who had just murdered his younger brother Abel, to which Cain had famously replied, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Malan, himself the son of a wine farmer, was deeply concerned about the exceptionally high levels of alcoholism he observed in the wine-producing district of Montagu – especially among its coloured community. The Swartland, where he had grown up, was also known for its wines, but he believed that the farmers there took care to ensure that excesses did not take place. He soon identified the culprit when he noted – with growing alarm – that as the number of local canteens serving alcohol increased, so too did the number of incidents reported to the local police. He saw a correlation between the availability of alcohol and its adverse effects. He placed the blame for the situation squarely on those who signed the necessary petitions that lobbied the municipality to open new canteens, rather than on the individuals who were addicted to alcohol. Since these petitioners were necessarily white, and those who suffered from alcoholism were mostly coloured, Malan also recognised a racial dimension to the problem:
If God has placed the body and soul of another in our hands, then He also has the right – and He also will demand – that body and soul from our hands … our own salvation depends for a large part on the manner in which we deal with the salvation of another. Let us not forget that God places a high, priceless value on every human soul … He has imprinted upon it His own image, His mark of ownership … He was ready to pay for it, yes, for the soul of the poor drunken coloured lying next to the street, a high price, the highest price ever to be uttered by human lips, the blood of the eternal Son. Can He be anything other than filled with a holy solemnity about the salvation of such a soul? Can He demand anything other than a strict account from everyone who had it in his power to save or ruin a soul?[80]
Through the Cain and Abel metaphor, Malan made it clear that the white community in Montagu was indeed its coloured brothers’ keeper. White petitioners had to take responsibility for their position of power. They had it within their power to provide already weakened alcoholics with even more temptation – or to limit the temptation and thereby aid a struggling soul.[81] There was another important component to Malan’s thinking: social ills had to be fought by authoritative measures from the top – it could not be left to the individual to fight them on his own. In this one recognises a mind-set that believed that most problems could be solved by the appropriate regulations, and it was to characterise his solutions to many difficult questions.
Malan’s appeal, which linked his congregation’s Christian conscience to their racial status, struck a deep chord. His views were received enthusiastically. A direct result of the sermon was a draft petition by his congregation to close a number of the town’s canteens. The petition was successful and elicited added measures, such as a limitation on the hours during which alcohol could be sold.[82] Malan, who had expected an angry rebuttal from his wine-producing flock, was astonished by the overwhelmingly positive response.[83] The experience must have diminished his initial fear of tackling sensitive issues – a valuable lesson indeed for a future politician.
At this stage, Malan did not realise that his sermons were paving his way to the political platform. The less educated among his flock might have struggled to follow him at first, but to a discerning listener, Malan’s sermons were an oratory feast, for which they were willing to travel a good distance. M.E. Rothmann (M.E.R.), who would become a well-known Afrikaans author, heard Malan’s sermons in Montagu. She recalled Malan’s sermons as befitting Matthew Arnold’s description of style: ‘Have something to say, and say it as clearly as possible.’ He had the ability to keep his audience spellbound for longer than an hour, and his oration would neither weaken nor waver for a moment. This was due to the incalculable amount of time Malan spent in formulating his arguments. He even refused to address a simple prayer meeting unless he had had the time to prepare. The notes to his sermons became collector’s items among his many admirers.[84] One of these was Andrew Hofmeyr, the nephew of Malan’s Stellenbosch professor N.J. Hofmeyr, who practised law in Montagu. He made copies of Malan’s sermons and sent these to his brother, Willie Hofmeyr. Willie Hofmeyr was a partner in a Cape Town law firm and knew Malan
