VAN NOORT, GERARD CORNELIS. - Theologian, b. 10 May 1861 at Stompwijk in Holland, d. at Amsterdam on 15 Sept. 1946.
Ordained priest on 15 Aug. 1884, he exercised the ministry for some time in various parishes; in 1892 he was appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the Seminary of Warmond, where he composed the manuals that brought him great renown: *De fide catholica* (Leyden 1898), *De vera religione* (ibid. 1901), *De Ecclesia Christi* (ibid. 1902), *De Deo Creatore* (Amsterdam 1903), *De Deo Redemptore* (ibid. 1904), *De Sacramentis Ecclesiae* (2 vols., ibid. 1905), *De fontibus Revelationis necnon de fide divina* (ibid. 1906), *De Deo Uno et Trino* (ibid. 1907), *De Gratia Christi* (ibid. 1908); all went through several editions. Besides the series of his manuals (later completed by his successor I. P. Verhaar from notes and under V. N.’s own direction with a volume *De Sacramentis Ecclesiae* [Antwerp 1926], *De Novissimis* [ibid. 1935]), he published in Dutch some popular pamphlets and articles in *De Katholiek* and *Studia catholica*. Five small volumes of his sermons also appeared (1946-47).
The significance of V. N. as a theologian must be assessed in relation to his environment and his time; first of all in the field of apologetics, given the religious conditions in Holland: more than an interpreter of the doctrine of the faith, he was its defender; and then in the renewal of theology after the encyclical *Aeterni Patris* of Leo XIII, and in the struggle against modernism. For theology he drew many elements from Scheeben and Billot; moreover, he valued and introduced the results of the researches of Batiffol and Lagrange. V. N. was not an original theologian, but a learned master of theology, a skilful expositor of the most recent discoveries in the archaeological, historical and biblical fields.