The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29 |
Born, raised, educated and ordained within the bosom of the Christian Reformed Church, I never abandoned my love and appreciation for this small but active denomination. I attended its college and seminary for eight years. For nine years I taught Bible in the high schools aligned with it, and for fifteen years served as pastor in three of its churches. The CRC then appointed me its Adult Education Editor and I anticipated this would be a position in which I would serve the church for the remainder of my professional career.
However, in 1980 the church let me know it had no further use for my services in that capacity, thus freeing me from ecclesiastical responsibilities and allowing me to seek the will of the Lord with only his divine guidance. Gradually the Lord opened my eyes to see that he had a much more important task for me to perform: theological pioneering.
A first major discovery was the surprising extent in which the Enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant had re-oriented modern theology, beginning with the subjectivism of Schleiermacher, continuing with the moralism of Ritschl, then the rationalism of American Fundamentalism, and finally the Christocentrism of Neo-Orthodoxy. I wrote up this analysis in a book entitled, Christianity Down To Earth.
I began to wonder then also about the earlier history of our theology, only to discover to my sadness that non-Christian philosophy had shaped a great deal of the ancient theology we have inherited from earlier ages. I slowly discovered, after careful examination of our CRC theological documents, that the theology I had embraced, taught, and preached my entire life was saturated with elements that were not rooted in reality.
All of that strengthened the conviction that the Lord had been preparing me to be a pioneer for Christ in theology. I have been writing about these things ever since and my children are now (2015) cooperating to make these books available to the public, both in e-book form and in print.
God has been revealing new and challenging things to us via the scientific community, things imbedded in the objective physical world, all of which God himself has put there. The new insights, such as the age of the universe, the age of planet Earth, the origin of life, the development of the human race, the progress of human history; all of that put together is God’s way of telling us we are at a point in his divine direction of time and history where we must examine and revise the theology of the past.
When we do that honestly – and this is what I have been trying to do now for a couple of decades – we are discovering that God is revealing a much better view of truth and life and the gospel than we have ever had before. I call it Developmentalism, and many of the books offered here on this website are studies analyzing that perspective.
It is my hope and expectation that in the years and decades to come the Lord will lead his church to new and more realistic visions and understandings of the gospel, such that the peoples of the world will once again see and feel and obey the summons of the Lord to be his images in the process of doing what he gives us to do.
However, in 1980 the church let me know it had no further use for my services in that capacity, thus freeing me from ecclesiastical responsibilities and allowing me to seek the will of the Lord with only his divine guidance. Gradually the Lord opened my eyes to see that he had a much more important task for me to perform: theological pioneering.
A first major discovery was the surprising extent in which the Enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant had re-oriented modern theology, beginning with the subjectivism of Schleiermacher, continuing with the moralism of Ritschl, then the rationalism of American Fundamentalism, and finally the Christocentrism of Neo-Orthodoxy. I wrote up this analysis in a book entitled, Christianity Down To Earth.
I began to wonder then also about the earlier history of our theology, only to discover to my sadness that non-Christian philosophy had shaped a great deal of the ancient theology we have inherited from earlier ages. I slowly discovered, after careful examination of our CRC theological documents, that the theology I had embraced, taught, and preached my entire life was saturated with elements that were not rooted in reality.
All of that strengthened the conviction that the Lord had been preparing me to be a pioneer for Christ in theology. I have been writing about these things ever since and my children are now (2015) cooperating to make these books available to the public, both in e-book form and in print.
God has been revealing new and challenging things to us via the scientific community, things imbedded in the objective physical world, all of which God himself has put there. The new insights, such as the age of the universe, the age of planet Earth, the origin of life, the development of the human race, the progress of human history; all of that put together is God’s way of telling us we are at a point in his divine direction of time and history where we must examine and revise the theology of the past.
When we do that honestly – and this is what I have been trying to do now for a couple of decades – we are discovering that God is revealing a much better view of truth and life and the gospel than we have ever had before. I call it Developmentalism, and many of the books offered here on this website are studies analyzing that perspective.
It is my hope and expectation that in the years and decades to come the Lord will lead his church to new and more realistic visions and understandings of the gospel, such that the peoples of the world will once again see and feel and obey the summons of the Lord to be his images in the process of doing what he gives us to do.
***
Professional Career
1952-57 Bible Teacher, West Michigan Christian High School 1957-61 Bible Teacher, Eastern Christian High School 1961-65 Pastor, Holland, MN, Christian Reformed Church 1965-71 Home Missionary, Webster, NY, Christian Reformed Church 1971-76 Pastor, Framingham, MA, Christian Reformed Church 1976-80 Adult Education Editor, CRC Board of Publications 1980- Author |
Academic Degrees
1948 AB Education, Calvin College 1949 AB Pre-Seminary, Calvin College 1952 Th.B., Calvin Theological Seminary 1975 D. Min., Andover-Newton Theological School 1980 Th. M., Calvin Theological Seminary |
***