Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Congratulations Daniel Mullin!
Daniel Mullin successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at the VU University, Amsterdam, on December 20, 2012. His thesis is titled: "Democracy without Secularism: A Pragmatist Critique of Habermas.” It is a fine piece of scholarship, and we can all take pride in Daniel's accomplishment. Dan also handled himself very capably during the one-hour formal defense.
In the photo, surrounding the candidate, are (from l to r): Govert Buijs (VU, opponent), Theo De Wit (Tilburg, opponent), Ron Kuipers (ICS, promotor), Daniel Mullin (candidate), Willie van der Merwe (VU, co-promotor), Pieter Duvenage (University of the Free state, opponent) and Ad Verbrugge (VU, opponent). Missing is Robin Celikates (University of Amsterdam, opponent), who had to leave immediately after the defense.
Advent Appeal 2012
Thank you to all who have supported ICS with prayers, financial gifts and expressions of appreciation, particularly through December and the busy Christmas season.
Our Advent appeal continues until mid-February. Please go to www.icscanada.edu/support/advent-appeal to read our advent letter and ICS alumnus Steve van de Hoef’s story. Steve’s story is just a sampling of how our alumni are making a difference in our communities. We hope that this story will give you a glimpse of how vital your gift is to helping ICS through its programs to bring renewal and hope to our world.
To make a donation online please go to www.icscanada.edu/support, or call us at 416-979-2331 ext 223 (Vidya Williams) or ext 221 (Kathy Lynch) to make a credit card donation, or mail your cheque to Institute for Christian Studies, 100-229 College St., Toronto ON M5T 1R4. Thank you!
Our Advent appeal continues until mid-February. Please go to www.icscanada.edu/support/advent-appeal to read our advent letter and ICS alumnus Steve van de Hoef’s story. Steve’s story is just a sampling of how our alumni are making a difference in our communities. We hope that this story will give you a glimpse of how vital your gift is to helping ICS through its programs to bring renewal and hope to our world.
To make a donation online please go to www.icscanada.edu/support, or call us at 416-979-2331 ext 223 (Vidya Williams) or ext 221 (Kathy Lynch) to make a credit card donation, or mail your cheque to Institute for Christian Studies, 100-229 College St., Toronto ON M5T 1R4. Thank you!
Thursday, 3 January 2013
ICS Welcomes Tom and Dawn Wolthuis!
ICS is pleased to announce that our Presidents, Rev. Dr. Thomas Wolthuis and Ms. Dawn Wolthuis, have arrived.
They are grateful that they had relatively smooth sailing crossing the border and moving into their condo. They are happy to be here and are thankful for all of the prayers and good wishes backing them in their new adventure.
We warmly welcome Tom and Dawn to ICS!
They are grateful that they had relatively smooth sailing crossing the border and moving into their condo. They are happy to be here and are thankful for all of the prayers and good wishes backing them in their new adventure.
We warmly welcome Tom and Dawn to ICS!
The New Winter Semester Begins at ICS!
This month marks the beginning of the new winter semester at ICS. There are six courses starting as well as two distance course offered this semester:
Truth and Authenticity: Heidegger’s Being and Time with Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart
Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise with Dr. Bob Sweetman
Deconstruction and Politics with Dr. Shannon Hoff
Pragmaticism and Religion: Dewey, Rorty and Stout with Dr. Ron Kuipers
Interdisciplinary Seminar (IDS): What Is This Thing Called Religion? Spiritual Difference, Secular Critique and Human Maturity with the Faculty
Thinking the World of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/theology with Dr. Nik Ansell
Winter 2013 Distance Courses:
Biblical Foundations with Jeffrey Hocking and John Stanley
Christianity and the Ecological Crisis with Chris Allers
For course descriptions, please visit courses.icscanada.edu.
Truth and Authenticity: Heidegger’s Being and Time with Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart
Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise with Dr. Bob Sweetman
Deconstruction and Politics with Dr. Shannon Hoff
Pragmaticism and Religion: Dewey, Rorty and Stout with Dr. Ron Kuipers
Interdisciplinary Seminar (IDS): What Is This Thing Called Religion? Spiritual Difference, Secular Critique and Human Maturity with the Faculty
Thinking the World of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/theology with Dr. Nik Ansell
Winter 2013 Distance Courses:
Biblical Foundations with Jeffrey Hocking and John Stanley
Christianity and the Ecological Crisis with Chris Allers
For course descriptions, please visit courses.icscanada.edu.
Advent Appeal 2012
Thank you to all who have supported ICS with prayers, financial gifts and expressions of appreciation, particularly through December and the busy Christmas season.
Our Advent appeal continues until mid-February. Please go to www.icscanada.edu/support/advent-appeal to read our advent letter and ICS alumnus Steve van de Hoef’s story. Steve’s story is just a sampling of how our alumni are making a difference in our communities. We hope that this story will give you a glimpse of how vital your gift is to helping ICS through its programs to bring renewal and hope to our world. To make a donation online please go to www.icscanada.edu/support, or call us at 416-979-2331 ext 223 (Vidya Williams) or ext 221 (Kathy Lynch) to make a credit card donation, or mail your cheque to Institute for Christian Studies, 100-229 College St., Toronto ON M5T 1R4. Thank you!
Our Advent appeal continues until mid-February. Please go to www.icscanada.edu/support/advent-appeal to read our advent letter and ICS alumnus Steve van de Hoef’s story. Steve’s story is just a sampling of how our alumni are making a difference in our communities. We hope that this story will give you a glimpse of how vital your gift is to helping ICS through its programs to bring renewal and hope to our world. To make a donation online please go to www.icscanada.edu/support, or call us at 416-979-2331 ext 223 (Vidya Williams) or ext 221 (Kathy Lynch) to make a credit card donation, or mail your cheque to Institute for Christian Studies, 100-229 College St., Toronto ON M5T 1R4. Thank you!
Deepest Sympathy for the Borgdorff Family
It is with great sadness that we relay the news of the tragic passing last month of Leonard Borgdorff, son of Peter Borgdorff. Leonard was tragically killed in a vehicle accident.
The ICS community extends its deepest sympathy to the Borgdorff family, and we ask that you keep Peter and his family in your prayers during this most difficult time.
The ICS community extends its deepest sympathy to the Borgdorff family, and we ask that you keep Peter and his family in your prayers during this most difficult time.
Translations of the Implicit
On December 7 Junior Member Jelle Huisman successfully defended his MA thesis, titled “Translations of the Implicit: Tracing How Language Works beyond Gendlin and Derrida.” External examiner Graeme Nicholson, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, says the thesis shows “thorough understanding of many of today’s important philosophers, and a constructive, creative capacity to illuminate a major problem.” Other members of the examining committee included Lambert Zuidervaart (thesis supervisor), Jim Olthuis (internal examiner), and Bob Sweetman (examination chair). Jelle and his family currently reside in the Netherlands, where he is preparing to enter a PhD program in translation studies. Congratulations, Jelle!
Praise for Art in Public
Art in Public, Lambert Zuidervaart’s latest book, has received high praise in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JAAC), the journal of record for philosophy of the arts in North America. Book reviewer Jason Simus writes: “I highly recommend Art in Public to anyone interested in public art in general, and for anyone … involved in more specific discussions about government funding of the arts, it should be required reading.” The complete review appears in JAAC 70 (Fall 2012): 403-5. Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.
Message from the Presidents
Close to the heart of the Christian religion lies paradox. In a way that ought not to surprise, for it is very difficult to know how and where exactly paradox and mystery differ. Certainly there is something mysterious about paradox. And the Christian religion, like all religion perhaps, marks out our human response to the Mystery that conditions our living, our breathing, our very being, a response that depends upon that Mystery for its every success.
You know you are in the presence of something paradoxical when you realize that opposites which we ordinarily think of as mutually exclusive turn out to belong, indeed to lay claim to the very same “place” at the very same “time”. Old and new are perhaps appropriate to illustrate what I mean. Old and new are opposites. When we try to think of them together it is as if they work against each other. There is a kind of mental repulsion that keeps “the new” apart from “the old”. When something is new it is not old, and vice versa of course. Bring God and God’s revelation into the picture however and something odd happens. Old and new belong together. Creation is divine revelation. And Creation is old, billions of years old it seems. None of us go back to the beginning. Narratively but also scientifically we can only hypothesize on the basis of what we know or think we know because of observations being made right now or at least right now in comparison to the beginning beyond our ken that we are trying to investigate or imagine. Creation is old; God’s revelation is old beyond count and tells us of its age time and again. Scripture is by comparison new and indeed reveals something new about God’s revelation: Christ, God-with-us, who came to make all things new. This newness is illustrated in the Good News of Scripture and in its works right here, right now, in our hearts and lives. God’s revelation is old and new. It is both at the same time. There is something paradoxical about God’s revelation, come to think of it. And God’s revelation is the occasion for Christian religion. It only stands to reason there is something paradoxical about it too.
I can get at this last point in terms of another pair of terms: continuity and discontinuity. The story of Christian religion, of our human response to God’s revelation, is a story that is at one and the same time continuous and discontinuous. There is a deep continuity that goes all the way back to the beginning; it is ancient of days, like the Creator in the Psalmist’s description. There is a meaning that gives shape to the world of creatures, a meaning that is rooted in God’s original invitation to be. That original invitation has never passed on. It continues to hold. We can see this holding both in what stays the same and what changes in our world. In the Reformational tradition we have often spoken of that enduring continuity as Creation Law or Order. It is deep, moving below the surface of things, like tree sap in the heart of northern winter. There is continuity here that suffuses all that goes into creaturely existence establishing health and the basis for health throughout all our days and places. Such continuity finds its level in all our storytelling as a choir’s drone essential if not often attended to in the presence of the cantor’s musical pyrotechnics. But that is not all, sadly. There is not just the patient unfolding of the implications of all God’s original “Let there be . . .”s. There is also catastrophe in the air.
Our whole world bears the abysmal discontinuity of sin, original promise blighted. Our access to original meaning is made difficult. It has been driven deep into the thews of our world, deep below the reach of our foreshortened vision, our poorly engineered attention’s span. If original promise and blessing remain the first and deepest word we can utter in our response to God’s revelation, we no longer see and know of what we speak, not clearly, not without ambiguity and the hesitancy around or blind bellicosity with each other that follows in ambiguity’s wake. And that too halleluia is not the end of the story. There is redemption afoot, opening up possibilities like a Spirit hovering over the void. And this redemption dynamic is incarnate. It inserts its God-dynamism into flesh and earth, water and air, with the willfulness of flame, going where it lists while we huff and puff in our awed efforts to keep up and keep track of all that is made new in its light. Redemption brings to the surface original blessings buried deep as the best kept secrets within every iota of creaturely existence, but it also redeems discontinuity itself until it too speaks of blessing so that from now on continuity and discontinuity belong together in the mystery of a redeemed creation inclining in hope toward consummation. This is the paradox of Christian existence. Such existence suggests at one and the same time a continuity deep within a plot riddled with discontinuity, and the presence of discontinuity deep within a long continuous narration. In this, stories of Christian existence mirror ever so well the paradox of God’s revelation itself. And it means that our stories have a complexity native to and ineradicable in them. The old and the new will be ever and simultaneously present. Continuities will be enabled by every discontinuity, and vice versa. We Christians will only remain the same by changing, and constitutive of any change will also be a subterranean remaining-the-same. Every conversion will at one and the same time reaffirm an original goodness, just as every affirmation of an original goodness will demand future conversion.
The paradox of Christian existence is a good thing to remember heading into a new year. For us at ICS it is particularly poignant. We are at the cusp of a new chapter of ICS’s existence in which we welcome new presidents and work with them to bring what is old into what will be new, seeking ever to respond gratefully to the New/Old presence of our Lord whose age-old invitation to be continues to resound in the redemption dynamic that invites us to turn ourselves around so as to cooperate in making all things new. It is my prayer that ICS will find ways of being ever more the very best of its original promise in its becoming ever-new, especially in the chapter of its story that begins with the advent of new presidents at the snowy dawn of 2013. I invite you all to join me in that prayer this month.
For the Presidents,
Bob Sweetman
You know you are in the presence of something paradoxical when you realize that opposites which we ordinarily think of as mutually exclusive turn out to belong, indeed to lay claim to the very same “place” at the very same “time”. Old and new are perhaps appropriate to illustrate what I mean. Old and new are opposites. When we try to think of them together it is as if they work against each other. There is a kind of mental repulsion that keeps “the new” apart from “the old”. When something is new it is not old, and vice versa of course. Bring God and God’s revelation into the picture however and something odd happens. Old and new belong together. Creation is divine revelation. And Creation is old, billions of years old it seems. None of us go back to the beginning. Narratively but also scientifically we can only hypothesize on the basis of what we know or think we know because of observations being made right now or at least right now in comparison to the beginning beyond our ken that we are trying to investigate or imagine. Creation is old; God’s revelation is old beyond count and tells us of its age time and again. Scripture is by comparison new and indeed reveals something new about God’s revelation: Christ, God-with-us, who came to make all things new. This newness is illustrated in the Good News of Scripture and in its works right here, right now, in our hearts and lives. God’s revelation is old and new. It is both at the same time. There is something paradoxical about God’s revelation, come to think of it. And God’s revelation is the occasion for Christian religion. It only stands to reason there is something paradoxical about it too.
I can get at this last point in terms of another pair of terms: continuity and discontinuity. The story of Christian religion, of our human response to God’s revelation, is a story that is at one and the same time continuous and discontinuous. There is a deep continuity that goes all the way back to the beginning; it is ancient of days, like the Creator in the Psalmist’s description. There is a meaning that gives shape to the world of creatures, a meaning that is rooted in God’s original invitation to be. That original invitation has never passed on. It continues to hold. We can see this holding both in what stays the same and what changes in our world. In the Reformational tradition we have often spoken of that enduring continuity as Creation Law or Order. It is deep, moving below the surface of things, like tree sap in the heart of northern winter. There is continuity here that suffuses all that goes into creaturely existence establishing health and the basis for health throughout all our days and places. Such continuity finds its level in all our storytelling as a choir’s drone essential if not often attended to in the presence of the cantor’s musical pyrotechnics. But that is not all, sadly. There is not just the patient unfolding of the implications of all God’s original “Let there be . . .”s. There is also catastrophe in the air.
Our whole world bears the abysmal discontinuity of sin, original promise blighted. Our access to original meaning is made difficult. It has been driven deep into the thews of our world, deep below the reach of our foreshortened vision, our poorly engineered attention’s span. If original promise and blessing remain the first and deepest word we can utter in our response to God’s revelation, we no longer see and know of what we speak, not clearly, not without ambiguity and the hesitancy around or blind bellicosity with each other that follows in ambiguity’s wake. And that too halleluia is not the end of the story. There is redemption afoot, opening up possibilities like a Spirit hovering over the void. And this redemption dynamic is incarnate. It inserts its God-dynamism into flesh and earth, water and air, with the willfulness of flame, going where it lists while we huff and puff in our awed efforts to keep up and keep track of all that is made new in its light. Redemption brings to the surface original blessings buried deep as the best kept secrets within every iota of creaturely existence, but it also redeems discontinuity itself until it too speaks of blessing so that from now on continuity and discontinuity belong together in the mystery of a redeemed creation inclining in hope toward consummation. This is the paradox of Christian existence. Such existence suggests at one and the same time a continuity deep within a plot riddled with discontinuity, and the presence of discontinuity deep within a long continuous narration. In this, stories of Christian existence mirror ever so well the paradox of God’s revelation itself. And it means that our stories have a complexity native to and ineradicable in them. The old and the new will be ever and simultaneously present. Continuities will be enabled by every discontinuity, and vice versa. We Christians will only remain the same by changing, and constitutive of any change will also be a subterranean remaining-the-same. Every conversion will at one and the same time reaffirm an original goodness, just as every affirmation of an original goodness will demand future conversion.
The paradox of Christian existence is a good thing to remember heading into a new year. For us at ICS it is particularly poignant. We are at the cusp of a new chapter of ICS’s existence in which we welcome new presidents and work with them to bring what is old into what will be new, seeking ever to respond gratefully to the New/Old presence of our Lord whose age-old invitation to be continues to resound in the redemption dynamic that invites us to turn ourselves around so as to cooperate in making all things new. It is my prayer that ICS will find ways of being ever more the very best of its original promise in its becoming ever-new, especially in the chapter of its story that begins with the advent of new presidents at the snowy dawn of 2013. I invite you all to join me in that prayer this month.
For the Presidents,
Bob Sweetman
Prayer Letter: January 2013
Wednesday, January 2: At the beginning of 2013, we look ahead to another year and ask God's blessing on all our learning and teaching that will happen here at ICS.
Thursday, January 3: For all the Senior Members who are busy with the final preparation for their winter classes, we pray for guidance and stamina.
Friday, January 4: Peter Borgdorff’s son Leonard died tragically in a vehicle accident last month. Please keep the Borgdorff family in your prayers.
Monday, January 7: The first week of classes of the winter semester begins today! Today is the first day for “Truth and Authenticity: Heidegger’s Being” with Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart. We ask for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Tuesday, January 8: Two new courses begin today: “Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise” with Senior Member Bob Sweetman, and “Deconstruction and Politics” with Senior Member Shannon Hoff. We offer prayers for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Wednesday, January 9: A new courses begins today: “Pragmatism and Religion: Dewey, Rorty, and Stout” with Senior Member Ron Kuipers. We ask for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Thursday, January 10: Today is the first day of “IDS: What is This Thing Called Religion? Spiritual Difference, Secular Critique and Human Maturity” with the Faculty. We pray for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Friday, January 11: Senior Member Nik Ansell's course begins today: “Thinking the World of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/theology”. We pray for God's blessing on all the participants.
Monday, January 14: Two distance education courses begin this week: “Biblical Foundations” with Jeffrey Hocking and John Stanley, and “Christianity and the Ecology Crisis” with Chris Allers. We pray for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Tuesday, January 15: We warmly welcome Tom and Dawn Wolthuis, our Presidents, and we ask God's blessing on them and their work here at ICS.
Wednesday, January 16: We ask God's blessing upon the Academic Council and the Leadership Team which both meet today. We are grateful for the experience and expertise they bring to ICS and ask God to guide them in their discussions and decisions.
Thursday, January 17: We offer prayers of thanks for the many people who have presented ICS with gifts of prayer, money, and expressions of appreciation, particularly through December and the Christmas season. We are deeply grateful to be blessed with so much support and interest.
Friday, January 18: We offer prayers of gratitude for all the work done for ICS by our outgoing President, Chris Gort. Chris will be missed here!
Monday, January 21: This month Senior Member Rebekah Smick begins a sabbatical. We pray for wisdom and energy for her as she works.
Tuesday, January 22: For any of us who are ill or who have friends who are ill, we pray for peace, strength, hope and healing.
Wednesday, January 23: The Faculty meets today. We pray for God's wisdom to guide this meeting.
Thursday, January 24: We offer prayers of praise for the hard work and talent of Junior Member Jelle Huisman, who successfully defended his MA thesis last month.
Friday, January 25: We ask God's help and guidance for all those who are doing advancement work for ICS both in Canada and in the US. Please pray that support for the vision and mission of ICS continues to grow.
Monday, January 28: We offer prayers of praise for the talent of Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart, whose latest book, Art in Public, has received high praise in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Tuesday, January 29: CPRSE Associate Director Allyson Carr’s grandfather passed away last month. Please keep Allyson and her family in your prayers.
Wednesday, January 30: The Interfaculty Colloquium will be held this afternoon. We pray for God's blessing on all participants, and for good and positive insights that will further important academic work.
We pray for God’s wisdom to guide the Leadership Team, which meets today.
Thursday, January 31: As the first month of the spring semester ends, we ask God's guidance and wisdom on all our Junior Members who are working hard in their courses, and for a sense of balance as they deal with families and jobs as well.
Thursday, January 3: For all the Senior Members who are busy with the final preparation for their winter classes, we pray for guidance and stamina.
Friday, January 4: Peter Borgdorff’s son Leonard died tragically in a vehicle accident last month. Please keep the Borgdorff family in your prayers.
Monday, January 7: The first week of classes of the winter semester begins today! Today is the first day for “Truth and Authenticity: Heidegger’s Being” with Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart. We ask for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Tuesday, January 8: Two new courses begin today: “Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise” with Senior Member Bob Sweetman, and “Deconstruction and Politics” with Senior Member Shannon Hoff. We offer prayers for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Wednesday, January 9: A new courses begins today: “Pragmatism and Religion: Dewey, Rorty, and Stout” with Senior Member Ron Kuipers. We ask for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Thursday, January 10: Today is the first day of “IDS: What is This Thing Called Religion? Spiritual Difference, Secular Critique and Human Maturity” with the Faculty. We pray for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Friday, January 11: Senior Member Nik Ansell's course begins today: “Thinking the World of God: Religious Language Beyond Onto/theology”. We pray for God's blessing on all the participants.
Monday, January 14: Two distance education courses begin this week: “Biblical Foundations” with Jeffrey Hocking and John Stanley, and “Christianity and the Ecology Crisis” with Chris Allers. We pray for God's blessing on all the course participants.
Tuesday, January 15: We warmly welcome Tom and Dawn Wolthuis, our Presidents, and we ask God's blessing on them and their work here at ICS.
Wednesday, January 16: We ask God's blessing upon the Academic Council and the Leadership Team which both meet today. We are grateful for the experience and expertise they bring to ICS and ask God to guide them in their discussions and decisions.
Thursday, January 17: We offer prayers of thanks for the many people who have presented ICS with gifts of prayer, money, and expressions of appreciation, particularly through December and the Christmas season. We are deeply grateful to be blessed with so much support and interest.
Friday, January 18: We offer prayers of gratitude for all the work done for ICS by our outgoing President, Chris Gort. Chris will be missed here!
Monday, January 21: This month Senior Member Rebekah Smick begins a sabbatical. We pray for wisdom and energy for her as she works.
Tuesday, January 22: For any of us who are ill or who have friends who are ill, we pray for peace, strength, hope and healing.
Wednesday, January 23: The Faculty meets today. We pray for God's wisdom to guide this meeting.
Thursday, January 24: We offer prayers of praise for the hard work and talent of Junior Member Jelle Huisman, who successfully defended his MA thesis last month.
Friday, January 25: We ask God's help and guidance for all those who are doing advancement work for ICS both in Canada and in the US. Please pray that support for the vision and mission of ICS continues to grow.
Monday, January 28: We offer prayers of praise for the talent of Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart, whose latest book, Art in Public, has received high praise in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Tuesday, January 29: CPRSE Associate Director Allyson Carr’s grandfather passed away last month. Please keep Allyson and her family in your prayers.
Wednesday, January 30: The Interfaculty Colloquium will be held this afternoon. We pray for God's blessing on all participants, and for good and positive insights that will further important academic work.
We pray for God’s wisdom to guide the Leadership Team, which meets today.
Thursday, January 31: As the first month of the spring semester ends, we ask God's guidance and wisdom on all our Junior Members who are working hard in their courses, and for a sense of balance as they deal with families and jobs as well.
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