New Seerveld and Neo-Calvinist Aesthetics Publications

A brand new collection of essays has recently been published on the topic of Neo-Calvinist approaches to art and aesthetics, featuring many of the most prominent voices in the tradition giving fresh insights on what this tradition has to offer arts and aesthetics discourses today. Cal Seerveld has written the following about the volume:

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Kunst D.V. is a handsome, hefty volume (374 pages, untranslated) in the Dutch language. After a succinct introduction there are four sections. The editors and Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin explicate the roots of the Calvinian faith-thought tradition toward the arts found in Jean Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd. Then Hans Rookmaaker, E. John Walford and James Romaine exemplify how art history can be done in a perspective sensitive to a Christian world-and-life vision. Calvin Seerveld, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lambert Zuidervaart, and Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin show how their communal focus on aesthetic theory can contribute to understanding imaginative and artistic realities. Finally the "theology of art" tack is introduced by Wessel Stoker, William Edgar, and Victoria Emily Jones. The many colour reproductions are of excellent quality, the notes are substantial, and various of the authors take issue with the characteristic ideas of the other writers for a lively, open-ended, up to date introduction to the important contribution made by thinkers regarding art and aesthetics in the line of Reformational Christian philosophical reflection.

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In addition to his contribution to Kunst D.V., Cal has also published two further volumes in the area of Biblical studies. Bewondering God's Dumbfounding Doings collects a series of meditations from Cal on the book of Revelation, which he delivered to a Toronto congregation over the course of two years. How to Read the Biblical Book of Proverbs--In Paragraphs offers a fresh translation of the book of Proverbs (as the title suggests) in paragraph form rather than as a series of disconnected aphorisms. Links to all of these books can be found below.

       

Publication Details and Links for Purchase

• Kunst D.V. (Neo)calvinistische perspectieven op esthetica, kunstgeschiedenis en kunsttheologie, eds. Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker and Roger D. Henderson. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn Motief, 2020. ISBN 978-94-6369-070-6
• Adrienne's contribution (Chapter 2 of the book) has also been shared on Artway.eu and can be read online here: https://www.artway.eu/artway.php?id=1095&action=show&lang=nl.
  
  
• New Calvin Seerveld volumes (both available through Toronto Tuppence Press)
• Bewondering God's Dumbfounding Doings: God Talking to Us Little People in the Final Book of the Bible. Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2020. [163 pages ISBN 978-0-88815-251-0]
• How to Read the Biblical Book of Proverbs--In Paragraphs. Ed. John H. Kok. Sioux Center: Dordt Press, 2020. [iii-189 pages ISBN 978-1-940567-24-2]