- First name
- Willem
- Last name
- Deurhoff
- Date of Birth
- 1650
- Date of Death
- 1717
- Born in
- Amsterdam
- Died in
- Amsterdam
Willem Deurhoff was an excentric, eclectic autodidact philosopher who mainly wrote on the necessity of God’s workings, Cartesian dualism and Christology. He was accused of being a Socinian and spinozist, but that last classification is doubtful, because he believed in miracles and God’s free will. Another clear-cut distinction which distances him from Spinoza was that there was a difference between the Creator and creation. A peculiar idea of Deurhoff was that the first act of creation by God was Christ. His collected writings were published in: Overnatuurkundig en schriftuurlyke saamstellinge van de H. Godgeleerdheid, afgeleid uit het kennelyke Gods, uit de weezendlyke genadegiften, en uit de H. Schrift, Leiden, 1715. See: NNBW, vol. 8, cols 381–2; BLGNP, vol. 4, pp. 116–7; DDP, vol. 1, pp. 260–5.