Review of Christian Dogmatics by van der Kooi and van den Brink

Christian Dogmatics
An Introduction
Cornelis van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink
Translated by Reinder Bruinsma with James D. Bratt
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
Hbk, 820pp, £34.99
ISBN 978-0-8028-7265-4

Publisher's website here





In their Preface, van der Kooi and van den Brink pose the question: ‘Who in their right mind would consider publishing a book with this title?’ Fortunately, Eerdmans have.
The book is extremely well laid out and each chapter follows a similar well-framed structure:

Aim
Making Connections
The main text
List of references

The aim highlights what each chapter attempts to do and serves as the skeleton of the discussion. Making connections poses some questions that will aid understanding of the subsequent chapter, they also provide opportunities for self-reflection. These would make excellent seminar materials for students studying the book. Each chapter is concluded by one or two pages of references - this supplements the surprisingly brief bibliography at the end of the book.

Van der Kooi and den Brink write from a Dutch Reformed perspective and this provides a refreshing approach. Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, sphere sovereignty, common grace and the cultural mandate all get a mention. As well as the usual topics of the Trinity, the attributes of God, the doctrine of revelation, the doctrine of creation, anthropology, sin and evil, the covenant, Christology, Soteriology, pneumatology, the doctrine of scripture, ecclesiology and eschatology.

If you can afford only one book on Christian Dogmatics or Systematic theology then this is the one to get.

Below I have provided a tabular comparison with Michael Bird’s Evangelical Theology and Grudem’s rather dated Systematic Theology. My original comparison was here - I’ve since updated it with rows on 'Kuyper mentions' and 'views of common grace'.

	Grudem	Bird	Van der Kooi & Van den Brink
No of pages	1296pp	912pp	820pp
Cost	$49.99	$49.99	$45.00
Intended aim/ purpose	Written primarily it for students … “but also for every Christian who has a hunger to know the central doctrines of the Bible in greater depth.”	To produce a textbook for Christians that represents a biblically sound expression of the Christian faith form the vantage point of the evangelical tradition.	“This book is a complete unit, from beginning to end, which means that the sequence of topics is of great importance. Each chapter, however, has been written as a complete discussion of its topic, which allows readers to profitably study any single chapter.”
Intended audience	Students and all those who want to know the Bible	To be accessible to laypeople, seminary students and leaders in the evangelical churches	“…first of all have students in mind, with the intellectual equipment and skills that the present generation is expected to possess… we hope that others besides theology students will profit from this book. … We are also thinking of pastors who want to refresh their knowledge, of academics in other branches of scholarship, and of journalists who may not themselves share in the Christian faith but are nevertheless expected to write about it in a professional manner.”
Author’s stated theological position	Holds to a “conservative view of biblical inerrancy, very much in agreement with the “Chicago Statement” of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy … and a traditional Reformed position with regard to questions of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility …, the extent of the atonement …, and the question of predestination.	Ex-Baptist post-Presbyterian Anglican. Reformed, evangelical and Calvinist	“We admit at the outset that we write from within the context of the Reformed faith tradition.”
Overview of Contents	Part 1 Doctrine of the Word of God Part 2 Doctrine of God Part 3 Doctrine of Man Part 4 Doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit Part 5 Doctrine of the application of redemption Part 6 Doctrine of the church Part 6 Doctrine of the future	Part 1 Prolegoma: Beginning to talk about God Part 2 The God of the gospel: the triune God in being and action Part 3 The gospel of the kingdom: the now and the not yet Part 4 The gospel of God’s Son: The Lord Jesus Christ Part 5 The Gospel of salvation Part 6 The promise and power of the Gospel: The Holy Spirit Part 7: The Gospel and humanity Part 8: The community of the gospelized	1. Dogmatics as Disciplined Thinking about God Definitions and Aims 2. Is There a God?  Prolegomena 3. God as Three in One  The Doctrine of the Trinity 4. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” The Names, Attributes, and Essence of God 5. Encountering God  The Doctrine of Revelation 6. Existence Given  The Doctrine of Creation 7. Human Beings and the Image of God Theological Anthropology 8. Existence Ravaged Sin and Evil 9. Israel, the Raw Nerve in Christian Theology The Doctrine of the Covenant 10. The Person of Jesus Christ  Christology 11. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” Jesus Christ as Victor, Redeemer, and Mediator 12. Holy Spirit, Giver of Life Pneumatology 13. The Book of God and of Humans The Doctrine of Scripture 14. Renewal of God’s Community Ecclesiology 15. Renewal of the Human Being Justification and Transformation 16. Renewal of God’s World Eschatology
Prolegomena	No	Yes	Yes
Indexes	Author Hymn Scripture Subject	Scripture and Apocrypha Subject Author	Names Subjects Scripture references
Definition of (Systematic) Theology	Uses the following definition of John Frame: “Systematic theology is any study that answers the question, “What does the whole Bible teach us today?” about any given topic.”	The study of the living God. “It is the attempt to say something about God and God’s relationship to the world. It is thinking about faith from faith. In a sense, theology is very much akin to the study of philosophy, worldview, religion, ethics, or intellectual history; it is a descriptive survey of ideas and the impact of those ideas.”	“…we defined theology as “reflecting about faith in God.” Such a definition is rather rudimentary. We may define theology a little more precisely as the attempt of thinking believers to clarify the nature and content of their faith.”
No of Kuyper mentions	4 (in bibliographies)	0	29
Position on common grace	“We may define common grace as follows: Common grace is the grace of God by which he gives people innumerable blessings that are not part of salvation. The word common here means something that is common to all people and is not restricted to believers or to the elect only.”		“Reformed theology coined the expression “common grace” (gratia communis), which refers to the form of divine grace that makes it possible for the world to stay inhabitable, since people—despite all their limitations and sinfulness—nonetheless often want the best for each other. This grace is mediated by the Spirit in many different ways, just as is the “special grace” that enables people to live in a restored relationship with God…” “Abraham Kuyper … developed the concept of common grace into a positive evaluation of human cultural development.”
Position on charismata	“all the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the New Testament are still valid for today, but that “apostle” is an office, not a gift, and that office does not continue today.”	not all of the gifts and offices have to endure ... For instance, I think it likely that the offices of prophet and apostle, which were eschatological ministries to provide the “foundation” for the church (Eph 2:20), no longer persist because the foundation has been laid, and the apostolic office and prophetic voice is largely subsumed into Christian preaching, witness, and teaching.	“The use of ‘charismatic’ as an adjective dates back little more than a century and is unknown in the Old and the New Testaments. In our time this adjective suggests that we are dealing with a personal quality, but this sense is not found in the Bible. People receive the charismata, but they do no become ‘charismatic’ as a result.”
Position on women	“neither traditional nor feminist, but ‘complementarian’— namely, that God created man and woman equal in value and personhood, and equal in bearing his image, but that both creation and redemption indicate some distinct roles for men and women in marriage .. and in the church.	Not made explicit here. Elsewhere in Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts he argues for almost an egalitarian position.	“Admittedly, there are intrinsic differences between men and women, and neither persons nor societies will function optimally when they are ignored. But more needs to be said because much of what we consider to be typically male or female is undoubtedly culturally determined.” “No human being exists in isolation. All men and women together compose humanity.”
Position on eschatology	Premillennial and post-tribulation.	“I would seriously like to be amillennial. It is so much simpler. It recognizes the already’ and ‘not-yet’ of biblical eschatology and avoids the eccentricities of postmillennialism and dispensational premillennialism”… “I conclude that the biblical eschatology is best described as historic premillennialism.”	“The motif behind this chiliastic expectation is fully biblical. It resists letting the salvation that Christ brings evaporate in a spiritualized interpretation.” “If God is the Creator of heaven and earth and if Christ is the Judge of our history, the Yes that God has spoken in Christ also affects time, history, and the cosmos as we know it. These too will be brought to fulfillment, will be sanctified and thereby completed. In this respect, millennialism is correct. But how it all happens is not visible to us; it is truly hidden. The real core of Christian eschatology is that Christ will come and that his rule over time and history, over work and culture, will be revealed.”
Treatment of ethical issues	The emphasis is on systematic theology, though it applies theology to life “where such application comes readily. Still, for a thorough treatment of Christian ethics, another textbook similar to this in scope would be necessary.”		“There is no doubt that in practice dogmatics, ethics, and hermeneutics constantly need and presuppose each other. There is much to be said for keeping them together.”

New Research on Groen van Prinsterer and the idea of Sphere Sovereignty by Glenn Friesen

Glenn Friesen has a soon to be published paper in Philosophia Reformata - it is available here as a preprint. In he he questions the current consensus view that Kuyper's view of sphere sovereignty was developed from Groen van prinsterer, and suggests that it has its source in non-Clavinistic ideas.

Abstract

Historians of reformational philosophy often claim that Abraham Kuyper obtained the idea of “Sovereignty in its own sphere” from Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer. But very little historical research has been done on Groen’s sources for and development of this idea. The first use of the Dutch phrase “souvereiniteit in eigen sfeer” is much earlier than previously thought; it was used in 1853 by J.I. Doedes, an associate of the “ethical theologian” Chantepie de la Saussaye. Groen became aware of the ideas of Franz von Baader through journals founded by them, and by reading and corresponding with them and others like J.H. Gunning, Jr. and Friedrich Fabri. Groen himself owned copies of some of Baader’s books. Groen also relied strongly on the work of the jurist Friedrich Julius Stahl, who was 37 years younger than Baader, but taught for a while at the same Munich university, and shared Baader’s antirevolutionary ideas.

Review of Choi's George Whitefield Evangelist for God and Empire

George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire
Peter Y. Choi
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
ISBN 978-0-8028-7549-5

The triumvirate of the early days of Evangelicalism has been Jonathan Edwards, John Wesly and George Whitefield. Of the three Whitefield has been the least written about as this graph shows (the data is from a ngram taken from mentions in google books):

Interactive version here

D. M. Lloyd-Jones regarded Whitefield as 'the most neglected man in the whole of church history. The ignorance concerning him is appalling.' However, more recently there have been a number of books written on Whitefield. These include: Harry Stout's  Divine Dramatist (1991); Arnold Dallimore's full two-volume biography (1970, 1980) and his one volume  published by Crossway (2010); Frank Lambert’s Pedlar in Divinity (2002); John Pollock's George Whitefield (2009); Jerome Dean Maffety’s The Accidental Revolutionary (2011); Thomas Kidd’s George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (2014), who sees Whitefield as a 'creative religious entrepreneur'; and the excellent George Whitefield: Life, Context and Legacy edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones (2016). And now we have this offering from Peter Choi, who was one of the contributors to the aforementioned edited volume.

This book is the fruit of Choi's PhD dissertation under Mark Noll, who authored the foreword. Choi takes a fresh perspective on Whitefield and sees him in his cultural and political context. He summarises the central focus of his book as: ‘The relationship between George Whitefield’s religious and imperial agendas’.

He primarily focuses his work on Whitefield's later ministry and on his time in Georgia. This enables Choi to develop a broader picture of Whitefield as more than an itinerant revivalist preacher. He rightly observes:

‘Although historians have never treated the last half of Whitefield’s public life as thoroughly as the first half, pursuing his importance for religion in the Atlantic world as a whole will show those latter years were just as important as the former’ (128).

Choi shows how Whitefield's concerns broadened out into social, economic and political areas:

‘For all of his early energy advocating the new birth, Whitefield’s later years witnessed much less attention to regeneration in his public ministry’(100).

These broader concerns were epitomised in his desire to turn the Bethesda orphanage, which he built in 1740 near Savannah, Georgia, into a college. Sadly, this ambition was unfulfilled. 

Choi presents us with a picture of Whitfield that goes beyond the revivalist preacher and grand itinerant, whose parish was the world. Whitefield’s concerns took on a broader perspective after the ‘Great Awakening’, they took on cultural and imperial aspects. Whitfield was more than a religious leader (14). According to Choi, it would have been accurate for Whitfield to declare ‘the empire is my parish’! (102). 

Choi identifies much of the work that Whitfield did ‘was an agent of British culture who used his potent mix of political savvy and theological creativity to champion the cause of imperial expansion’ (3). His desire to see Georgia develop sadly led him to the acceptance and even advocacy of slavery:

‘He recoiled at the horrors of slavery but also recognized the necessity of slave labor for the colonial cause in the South and even pointed out the possibility of redeeming virtues’ (146).

 He saw the economic and cultural development of Georgia as being dependent on the need for a large labour force, which slaves could provide.

Embed from Getty Images

The development of Bethesda orphanage into a college was to be the pinnacle of his career. For many, it is perhaps surprising that he wanted a college rather than a church. In particular, the reasons for the development of a college were also much broader than to provide a church or missionary workforce.

‘Bethesda was nothing less than a test site for the limits of imperial expansion and coercion. Significantly for evangelical religion, Bethesda also represented an effort to harness the revival spirit in an ongoing institutional form’ (218).

In his applications for the development of the college he focused on the economic, cultural and empire-wide benefits it would bring to the area; ‘he argued that a college in Georgia would help build the region’s cultural base’ (211).

In examining the latter part of Whitfield’s career and focusing on his work in Georgia Choi has shown us a much broader, and more complex, picture of Whitefield than has been portrayed in many of the popular biographies.

Review of A Documentary History of Religion in America

A Documentary History of Religion in America

Fourth Edition

Edwin S. Gaustad, Mark A. Noll & Heath W. Carter (eds)

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans

ISBN: 978-0-8028-7358-3

The first edition of this mammoth book was published in 1982 and edited by Edwin Gaustad (1923-2011). His aim was in part ‘to enable the “amateur” to reconstruct the religious history of America with the building blocks provided here’. The first three editions of the book comprised two volumes. This fourth edition is a condensed one-volume edition and takes us from the sixteenth century up to the Trump presidency. Inevitably this has meant a reduction in the number of documents form the first editions but also the inclusion of newer documents.

Heath Carter has taken up the reins from Gaustad and Mark Noll, who co-edited the third (2003) edition. The format here is similar to the previous incarnations. But Carter has taken the opportunity to update ‘some of the contents and approaches in order to reflect the latest scholarship in the field’ (xvii). He also puts the focus on public rather than private aspects of religion.

What is presented here is an impressive display of primary sources and illustrations.  Each of the chapters has an introduction as well as an impressive number of primary sources and end with an annotated list of suggested readings.

Typical of the chapters is the final chapter 8: ‘Into the new millennium’. It begins with a brief 4-page overview and then under the headings of Pluralism and politics, Trauma and transition, Religion and national upheaval has selections from diverse a range of writers and social commentators as Billy Graham, George W. Bush, Albert Mohler, Jr., Jim Wallis, and interviews with Arsalan Iftikhar and Eric Metaxas reading the Trump presidency. The chapter concludes with a two-page essay on suggested reading. 

This book will invaluable for anyone interested in the wide range of religion in America. It lives up to the aim of its original editor in that any amateur will find plenty of building blocks here to understand the religious history of America.

Summary of Kaemingk's Ch4: Kuyper's destruction of uniformity

Summary of Kaemingk's Ch3: The emergence of Christian pluralism

Kaemingk begins part 2 of his Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear by looking at the emergence of pluralism in the Netherlands and the influence of Abraham Kuyper on that pluralism. Here is my mindmap summary of Chapter 3:

Kaemingk - interlude: beyond Kuyper

After examining Kuyper's approach to pluralism (see mindmap here) Kaemingk, in his Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear,  identifies three weaknesses/ deficiencies in Kuyper's approach: his narrow Christology, the need for worship to develop character formation, and  a blind spot for action:

These weaknesses are examined and addressed in subsequent chapters.

Mindmap summary of Kuyper's construction of plurality (Ch5 of Kaemingk)

Matthew Kaemingk's Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear (Eerdmans, 2018) is a truly superb book.

Here's a mindmap summary of Kaemingk's take on Kuyper's construction of plurality - summarised from chapter 5:

(Click on the mp to enlarge it)

Believe Me by John Fea



Believe Me

The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump

John Fea

Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018

ISBN 978-0-8028-7641-6

Hbk; ix + 189pp 

Publisher's website here

A staggering 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump! How are we to explain this? Fea, an astute historian from Messiah College, identifies an unholy trinity of fear, power and nostalgia as being at the roots of this bizarre voting pattern. As he explains:

‘I approach this subject not as a political scientist, pollster, or pundit, but as a historian who identifies as an evangelical Christian. For too long, white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for a national past that may have never existed in the first place.’ (6)

As one would expect from a professional historian the book is well documented - there are over 20 pages of endnotes. The book then is no knee-jerk response to a strange event. Fea carefully analyses the background to Trump’s victory. He examines why Trump was chosen by evangelicals over Cruz, Rubio and Walker - all had strong Christian leanings - they perceived Trump to be a strong man who would protect them from the cultural shifts of the Obama legacy. Fea shows how Trump followed the playbook written by the Christian right such as those that comprised the Moral Majority. A playbook that that tapped into fear and anxiety. Fear of communism, of immigrants, of non-whites, and more recently of Islam — and fear of big-government interference. In Chapter 3 he examines the history of this fear, tracing it back to the Puritans and their fear of a spiritual and moral decline, and with creating a moral panic against witchcraft and Catholics. As Fea rightly observes:

‘Nearly all the anxieties evangelicals faced in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries carried over into the fundamentalist movement of the twentieth century.’ (90).

All this shows to understand the present we must understand the past.

Chapter 4 examines those that Fea has labelled the ‘court evangelicals’:

‘The roster of court evangelicals includes Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., Southern Baptist pastor and Fox News commentator Robert Jeffress, radio host and “family values” advocate James Dobson, evangelist Franklin Graham, Christian public relations guru Johnnie Moore (who claims to be a “modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer”), longtime Christian Right political operative Ralph Reed, culture warrior Paula White, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and megachurch pastor Mark Burns.’ (57)

Paula White is allegedly the person who ‘led’ Trump to Christ. These evangelicals it seems have endorsed Trump in return for political influence, for power (albeit illusory); they see Trump, as a ‘baby Christian’, and as a strong man who will save the USA from secularisation. Some even have described Trump as a Cyrus figure! 

The final chapter examines possible meanings behind Trump’s phrase ‘Make America Great Again’. What exactly does ‘again’ mean? Fea with his great historical insight shows that there hasn’t been a time when America was great! All that Trump has done with that phrase is tap into a sense of nostalgia for an illusionary vision of America as a Christian nation.

The book probably won’t convince all the 81% of evangelicals of the error of their ways— not least because the majority won’t read it. But, for those that do, it will give them pause for thought and hopefully help them to see that in supporting Trump they have colluded with the spirt(s) of the age and have bought the term evangelical into disrepute. As Fea has shown it is more fear, power and nostalgia rather than the lordship of Christ that caused them to support Trump.

This book should be required reading for all US evangelicals.

Contents

Aknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1.   The Evangelical Politics of Fear 11

2.   The Playbook 37

3.   A Short History of Evangelical Fear 65

4.  The Court Evangelicals 99

5. Make America Great Again 133

Conclusion 155

Notes 167

Pro Rege 46(3) March 2018

There is a feast of articles and reviews in this issue of Pro Rege:

Feature Articles

PDF

Therapeutic Approach in Moral Education: A Critical Assessment
Jan Habl

PDF

The Common Thread in Kuyper, Kuhn and Cognitive Psychology: Interpretive Frameworks
Daniel F. A. Hitchcock

PDF

WANTED: Vegetarian Kuyperians with Artistic Underwear
Calvin Seerveld

Response or Comment

PDF

A Letter to Dr. Sacha Walicord
Chris Gousmett

PDF

Reply to Dr. Chris Gousmett's Open Letter
Sacha Walicord

Book Reviews

PDF

The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest (Book Review)
Justin Bailey

PDF

The Disruption of Evangelicalism: The Age of Torrey, Mott, McPherson and Hammond (Book Review)
Keith C. Sewell

PDF

Calvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ's Two Kingdoms (Book Review)
Keith C. Sewell

Interview with Danie Strauss

D. F. M. (Danie) Strauss is one of the world's foremost Dooyeweerd scholars. He is the editor of Dooyeweerd's Collected Works and was the first director of the Dooyeweerd Centre in Canada. His Introduction to Dooyeweerd's Philosophy - does exactly that!

His seminal work is Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines published by Paideia Press (2009).

The majority of his academic papers are available on www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk/strauss.htm and on his own website www.daniestrauss.com

This is the interview I conducted with him.


Danie, could we begin by you telling us something about yourself?

Brief family history
Tharina and I got married on December 6, 1969 at Ventersburg in the Free State. During our first extended stay in the Netherlands Louise was born (Jan 6, 1971). Hélène arrived on October 24, 1974 (the year after our second year-long stay in the Netherlands – completing and publishing my PhD on the distinction between Concept and Idea). Herman joined the family on November 10, 1982. Tharina, Hélène, and Herman obtained Canadian citizenship and I am a Permanent Resident of Canada. Louise got married on May 28, 1994, just before the rest of us moved for some time to Canada where I established the Dooyeweerd Translation Project.

Tharina taught Didactics and Philosophy of Education in the Faculty of Education for a number of years and after our return from Canada she taught academic literacy (academic reading and writing skills) for 15 years. Before that, she taught English and German at “Oranje Meisieskool” in Bloemfontein. She has published a novel in 2010: “Inkayamba, monster snake in the sky, African Legend” (also available on Kindle) and recently has completed another novel to be published soon.

When we left for Canada in 1994 my advice to Louise and her husband Steph was to become entrepreneurs. They initiated a number of businesses until Mercedes Benz offered Steph a position in their Executive. After having had three Spar Supermarkets Steph has now entered into a new business supplying 45,000 kg chicken per week (contracts with large Supermarkets: Pick n Pay and Checkers).
Eventually, after she received the award for the best M.A. Thesis in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State (in 2000), Hélène returned to Canada where she first completed the theoretical part and then her PhD dissertation in 2005. (She received the Governor General's Golden Award for the best PhD at the University of Western Ontario and at the same time was appointed in the Department of English at McMaster University in Hamilton.) On a visit to South Africa prof Jonathan Jansen (then Rector at the UFS) invited her for an interview after which she was appointed as full professor at the UFS – and soon thereafter as head of the Department of English.
Herman plays the cello (was elected for the National Youth Orchestra and also won a competition as the best fiddler), has a master's degree in Computer Science (he works as a freelance Web-Developer) and he is one of the singers of Arco Musica)

Brief academic history
I was appointed as senior lecturer in Philosophy at the then UOFS in 1971. Then I was promoted to associate professor in January1976 and in October 1977 I became professor and head of the Department of Philosophy at the UOFS. In 1994 I went to Canada as the first Director of the Dooyeweerd Centre, where I initiated the publication of the collected works of Herman Dooyeweerd in English. I returned to South Africa in 1997 and from 1 April 1998 to 31 December 2001 I was Dean of the new Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State. Apart from 15 independent publications, 42 international conference papers and 20 contributions to collected works, I have published 295 articles in national and international journals. In 2005 my work on the philosophical foundations of the modern natural sciences was published by Peter Lang Publishers – Paradigmen in Mathematik, Physik und Biologie und ihre philosophischeWurzeln (216 pp.) (Frankfurt am Main). In 2006 Peter Lang published my work Reintegrating Social Theory – Reflecting upon human society and the discipline of sociology (310 pp.) (Oxford / New York). In 2009 my work, Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines was published by Paideia Press, Grand Rapids, USA (715 pp.). In 2011 this book received the award for outstanding work in the fields of systematic philosophy or the history of philosophy advancing the cause of the “Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea”. Since 2013 I am is a Research Fellow at the School of Philosophy, North West University, Potchefstroom campus. See daniestrauss.com and the Introduction to Dooyeweerd's Philosophy.

Who or what were your earliest influences?
During my schooldays I was always fascinated by technical inventions and playing with numbers and patterns. I was also intrigued by the experience I had with my father for he appeared to know a good answer to almost any question I could ask him. What I did not realize was that he went to Germany (in 1937) to study economics at Heidelberg but soon found out that there was a Nazi finger in the pie of his scholarship – which he then immediately gave up, relocated to the Netherlands (using money he inherited after his mother and father passed away respectively in 1927 en 1933) to continue his studies in economics with P.A. Diepenhorst (interestingly, Diepenhorst completed his PdD in 1904 on Calvin and the Economy). This enabled him to take the Encyclopaedia of the Science of Law (with Dooyeweerd) as one minor subject alongside economics as major. This enabled him (during the thirties of the previous century) to embark first upon studying Dooyeweerd’s three Volume work, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (WdW) – later translated and expanded as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (NC).

During my second last school year, I asked my father two questions, one on the slogan of the French revolution and another one on Achilles and the tortoise. He responded by explaining that Zeno attempted to reduce motion that static spatial positions and then added a remark about the theory of the various aspects of reality. He continued by saying something about the slogan freedom, equality and fraternity. He explained that the slogan was informed by Locke's classical liberal idea of the state (freedom), Rousseau's radical revolutionary democracy, surrendering freedom to the Hobbesian Leviathan, the “general will” (equality) and early socialistic ideas (fraternity).

My next question was why we do not find these background perspectives in the textbooks prescribed to us? My father responded by saying: “because they are not trained in philosophy” (he was professor of political philosophy). The next question is the one I should not have asked: What is philosophy?!
He gave me the fourth edition of Spier's “Inleiding tot de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee” (1950) and I immediately started to delve into the WdW and NC – and this brought me, among others, in contact with WdW-II pages 75-76 and NC-II pages 103-106. I was inspired to understand this philosophy and spent most of my leisure time to accomplish this goal. I came across so many unique and illuminating insights that I soon realized that it might be useful for me to note the pages on which I found these significant insights, for otherwise, I could be wasting time trying to get back to sections where Dooyeweerd explained important distinctions. Later on, finding myself involved in discussions of Dooyeweerd's philosophy it was helpful to know where key insights are found.

Why do you think Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is so little known?
There may be a number of reasons. First of all one may mention the resistance of those scholastic theologians who still adhered to the (Aristotelian) view that theology is the queen of the sciences without realizing that like every other special science also theology is dependent upon philosophical presuppositions. Secondly, while the Protestant churches struggled with doctrinal issues (such as predestination) Descartes converted to the intellectual world of Western Europe to modern Humanism. Although Roman Catholicism continued to be a formidable spiritual and intellectual power even after the Reformation, modern Humanism, driven by the ideal of rational scientific control and that of an autonomously free person, actually dominated the philosophical world during the past five centuries. Introducing a radical Christian philosophy within such an intellectual atmosphere is therefore not an easy undertaking. Thirdly, Dooyeweerd should rather have published more in German and English for then a wider world would have had the opportunity to take note of his original and radically new philosophy. Just compare the status within the English-speaking world of the Austrian contemporary legal scholar, Hans Kelsen. Fourthly, Dooyeweerd should have published his entire Encyclopedia of the Science of Law already in the 1940s. Not only would this have given him a chance to present his new philosophy by using his own Introduction to it, for it would have shown the academic world at once how effective his new philosophical insights and distinctions are for the various academic disciplines (special sciences) – in particular, his own field of specialization, the science of law. It should have been translated into English before or concurrent with his A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Fifthly, instead of publishing at least six versions of the transcendental critique during the latter part of his intellectually productive life, he should have focused on completing and publishing his Encyclopedia and the third Volume of Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy. Lastly, practically all the Introductions to Dooyeweerd's philosophy commenced with a fairly distanced explanation of the main contours of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, focused on the theory of modal aspects and individuality-structures. Such an alternative should imitate the path pursued by Dooyeweerd in his own intellectual development, namely first to test the fruitfulness of his new insights and distinctions within his own field of specialization (the science of law) and then to broaden the perspective towards the general philosophical implications of his new insights and systematic distinctions. Approaching his philosophy from this angle will enable one to highlight from the outset why this philosophy is so fruitful for relating an understanding of reality to an analysis of what takes place within the various academic disciplines, including the natural sciences. Such an Intro would have made this philosophy more accessible to a wider range of students, not merely philosophy students.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of his approach?
Dooyeweerd's philosophy has two major strengths:
1)         The systematic import of its philosophical distinctions; and
2)         The intellectual power of applying (his discovery) of the inter-modal ontic principle of the excluded antinomy, lying at the foundation of the intra-modal logical principle of non-contradiction.
Its weakness is given in developing a distinct systematic terminology, but once it is mastered it turns out to be one of the strong points.

You are General editor of the Collected Works of Dooyeweerd:
what does that entail?
First of all it entails endless patience, dedication and perseverance, such as being willing to translate one page a day for more than 10 years. Translating Dooyeweerd's Dutch texts into English is also not the easiest task. Fortunately, on a part time basis (and everyone involved in this project since 1986 contributed on a part time basis) it was possible to utilize the expertise of competent copy editors. None of them lasted for more than two years, except for Harry Van Dyke who supported me in an unequalled way during the last seven years.

I have taken responsibility for the format and lay-out also after we have switched from Mellen Press to Paideia Press as publisher of the project – including generating Subject Indexes and Name Indexes (Harry VanDyke more recently helped with three Volumes – Reformation and Scholasticism, Volume II, The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory and Time Law and History).

In some cases, additional time was needed owing to well-meant but non-productive initiatives. Allow me to mention two examples, Reformation and Scholasticism (RS), Volume I and The Roots of Western Culture.

RS-I was translated by Ray Togtmann but somehow Bob Knudsen mediated sending this text to me when I received most of the manuscripts in process from Magnus Verbrugge. When I checked with Ray it turned out that Knudsen has change Ray's translation substantially in a way that was not approved by Ray and unacceptable to him – so I had to start all over again. The extensive Greek quotes were finally taken care of by Al Wolters, who did an excellent job in this regard. As General Editor I had to add all the text connections (and corrections to the Greek quotations) to the master copy (by using Corel Ventura as Desk Top Publishing program). More than 5 000 hours of my time went into this single Volume.

A similar delay was caused when Herman Dooyeweerd Junior, a substantial and much-appreciated donor to the project, offered to help with the copy editing of Roots of Western Culture. The original translation was not quite accurate and left out some connecting paragraphs between subsequent articles originally published in Nieuw Nederland. He worked on the best part of the first 100 pages of Roots, sent it to me by mail and then, after I have inserted (and sometimes corrected) his editing suggestions, I sent the whole package back to him. I was waiting for his continued copy editing but a number of months later at a meeting of the Advisory Council of the Dooyeweerd Centre he reported that he did not receive the manuscript of Roots back from me. Back home in South Africa I checked my files and retrieved the Post Office slip providing the date on which I did send it to him. Once more, a few months later, Herman reported that he mislaid the manuscript but did find it again. A couple of months later he informed me that other obligations made it impossible for him to continue with the last two-thirds of Roots. After having thus lost more than a year on this manuscript I completed it in a month and with the help of Michelle Botting, at the time helping at the Dooyeweerd Centre, published this Volume straightaway.

The entire project obtained a new face when Kerry Hollingworth from Paideia Press established a connection with Lightning Source as Printer, located in Tennessee, near Nashville. Volumes printed through this link are much more affordable (on average around about US$10.00). Once the entire set of (plus-minus 25 Volumes of the) Collected Works would be in print (currently 16 are in print) a full set could be purchased for about US$200.00-US$250.00.

A soon to be published volume is Dooyeweerd’s 1926 inaugural lecture, could you tell us something about that and why it is so important?

The level of erudition displayed in this Inaugural Address is exceptional and deserves wider recognition and appreciation. I published an article on this issue: The place and historical significance of Dooyeweerd’s Inaugural Address of 1926. Journal for Christian Scholarship, 2012: 48(1):205-221).

Your website www.daniestraus.com has over 130 articles and you have had over 300 articles and books published. How do you manage to be so prolific? What is the ‘secret’?

Exploring multiple academic fields while focusing mainly on the philosophical foundations of the various academic disciplines, became a way of life to me. Perhaps I should add that by and large I have played squash every day for the past 45 years (except for Sundays).

What advice would you have for budding Christians scholars?

I would advise them to approach academic issues with a threefold agenda:
1)         First of all, investigate the history of the problem.
2)         Then contemplate the systematic import of the issue and consider which systematic philosophical distinctions may helpful in elucidating the history and significance of the issue.
3)         Finally, assess the special scientific implications of the issue.
In all of this, it will be helpful to gain a solid grip on perennial philosophical problems, such as: the one and the many; unity and multiplicity; the whole-parts relation; universality and what is individual, constancy and change and so on. In addition, a proper understanding of ism-ic orientations is also needed (what is at stake in atomism, individualism, holism, universalism, rationalism, irrationalism, realism, nominalism and so on.


What do you do for fun? 
I enjoy actuality programs (such as CNN and the History channel) and I watch some sports programmes. I have mentioned that I like it to play squash


If you were on a desert island what two luxuries would you take with you?

First of all the luxury of my computer – with 568 downloaded PDFs including works from (or about) the history of philosophy and the various academic disciplines (natural sciences and humanities). And secondly, my reading glasses enabling me to read them!