Building Upon Love, In Love

Then we will no longer be like children, tossed around here and there upon ocean waves, picked up by every gust of religious teaching spoken by liars or swindlers or deceivers. Instead, by truth spoken in love, we are to grow in every way into Him—the Anointed One, the head. He joins and holds together the whole body with its ligaments providing the support needed so each part works to its proper design to form a healthy, growing, and mature body that builds itself up in love.

 

—Ephesians 4:14-16 (The Voice)

 

Back in my college years, I spent many summer days installing eavestroughs. Working from the roof, my partner and I would start in on the noisy work of hammering off the old paint-peeling galvanized metal to make way for the new, baked-on-enamel steel rolling off the machine at the back of our truck. On more than one occasion, the clatter would bring a child out of his or her home to ask us what we were doing. With a gleam in his eye, my partner would invariably respond, “Your house is broken, we’re taking it apart so that we can bring it into the shop for repairs.” I clearly remember one panic-stricken youngster’s fearful reaction: “But where will I live?!”

While moments like this brought some levity to our otherwise monotonous days, something in my heart could not let these children persist in their anxiety for very long. My partner always teased me about how quickly I cracked, as I rushed to assure them that their house was not going anywhere, and we were just doing some small restorations around the edges.

There is something both beautiful and fearful about the trustfulness of a child. We would be very different creatures if such trust were not our starting place. But because this trust can be abused, we learn as we grow older that we can’t believe everything we hear, and that we need to develop and practice the art of discernment. We call “gullible” those adults who seem to have failed to learn this lesson, and “suspicious” those who have learned it all too well.

It seems to me that Paul wanted to help the church in Ephesus chart a course between these two extremes. As an educator, I find it intriguing, and not a little terrifying, that in so doing he warns these parishioners against being seduced or misled—literally being “wave tossed” or “wind blown”—by the “religious teaching” or “doctrine” (didaskalia) put forth by deceitful schemers. Even otherwise authoritative teaching, it seems, can be put to destructive purposes if it is not spoken in love.

But there’s the rub: what does it mean to speak the truth in love? How do we know that we are doing so? What does “in love” add to “speaking the truth”? When I told that little kid that her house wasn’t going anywhere, was I doing anything more than simply correcting factually inaccurate information? I like to think so. I was also trying to assure her and thereby hoping to relieve her anxiety. My heart went out to her the moment I saw the fear well up in her eyes, and I listened to my heart by responding as I did.

By “speaking the truth in love,” Paul says, we grow “in every way” into the shalom of our Messiah, our Pathfinder who encourages us to follow him and comes to our aid when we falter. When we follow Christ’s example, we contribute to the vitality of a body that is built up in love. We know we are speaking the truth in love, then, when we see our teaching edify the students in our charge, when we offer them and help them assume a confident basis from which to make their own unique contribution to our shared life on this healing path.

Alas, there is no formula, rule, algorithm, or GPS that will guarantee in advance that we will always speak the truth in love. It’s more of an art than a science. What we can be assured of, however, is that there will be signs along the way to tell us how we are doing, and the perduring presence of the Holy Spirit to infuse in us the desire to make whole what has been shattered, to bring peace where there is fear and anxiety, and to create a world where the human instinct to trust one another is affirmed rather than abused.

Shalom friends,

Ron Kuipers

Prayer Letter: October 2024

 Monday, September 30 - Friday, October 4:

As the month of October begins, we are reminded of the ongoing natural disasters affecting communities around the world. Most recently, Hurricane Helene has left devastation in its wake, and we humbly ask for your prayers for all those impacted by this tragedy. Please pray for the families displaced, those who have lost loved ones, and the many whose livelihoods have been disrupted. May they find peace and hope in the midst of their suffering, and may relief efforts swiftly bring the help that is so desperately needed.

At ICS, October marks the start of conference season, a time when our faculty, students, and staff are deeply engaged in academic events across the globe. These conferences are not just professional obligations but opportunities to connect, reflect, and collaborate with others in the field. We ask for your prayers for all involved in these conferences — for those presenting papers, those attending, and those working behind the scenes to make these events possible.

Specifically, we ask for your prayers for the New Leaf Conference, taking place on October 4th and 5th in Waterloo. This year’s theme, "Blessed are the Undone: Leading in the Era of Quiet Deconstruction," is inspired by Angela Reitsma and Peter Schuurman’s new book, Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada. As Christian communities across Canada are grappling with the complexities of deconstruction and the re-evaluation of faith, this conference comes at a pivotal moment. Neal DeRoo will be leading a workshop entitled "As the Kids Say: Viewing Deconstruction Through the Eyes of Christian University Students," which will explore how younger generations are engaging with faith, doubt, and belief. We ask that you pray for Neal and all the participants, that this conference will lead to healing conversations, new insights, and a renewed sense of purpose for leaders in the church.

Monday, October 7 - Friday, October 11:

As we move into the second week of October, please continue to pray for the many faculty and staff who will be attending the Kuyers Conference at Calvin University from October 10th to 12th. This conference is an important gathering for those committed to the integration of faith and learning, particularly in the context of higher education. The theme of this year’s conference is "Integrated Education in a Reductionist Age."

We ask for specific prayers for Edith van der Boom, who will be presenting her paper, "What is 'Christian' about Christian Education?: Formation and Learning." We also ask for prayers for Traver Carlson, who will be presenting his paper, "Cultivating Human Creativity: Artificial Intelligence and the Incarnation." Finally, Gideon Strauss and Kevin Otter (MA-EL) will present a paper entitled, "The Narrative Integration of Reflective Practice."

During this week, please also pray for the Friends of ICS (FICS) gathering, which will take place on October 12 in Grand Rapids. This gathering is an important time for reconnecting with friends and supporters of ICS, and for sharing the lively conversations currently gripping the Institute. Please pray for Ron Kuipers, Traver Carlson, and Kevin Otter as they speak at this event, that their words will be a source of encouragement and inspiration for all who attend.

Additionally, we ask for prayers for those contributing to Perspective, as their drafts are due this week. Pray that God will guide each contributor as they seek to engage with the questions that matter most. May their words reveal pathways to the truth, beauty, and love that are integral to God’s creation.

Monday, October 14 - Friday, October 18:

This week, we ask for your prayers as we hire a new Research Assistant to co-host the next season of Critical Faith. We ask for your prayers for those involved in the hiring process, that they may have wisdom, discernment, and fairness in their decisions. We also pray that the right candidate will be chosen, someone who brings both passion and insight to the work of engaging with these important conversations.

Additionally, pray that Jesus's message of healing and renewal breaks through to listeners of CBC Ideas on October 16 at 8PM EST, which will feature former ICS Senator and Christian commentator, Kristen Kobez du Mez. This episode is an edited version of the lecture that du Mez gave at the "Beyond Culture Wars" conference, which ICS hosted in conjunction with Martin Luther University College and Vision Ministries in April. Entitled "Jesus and John Wayne," du Mez details the relationship between American masculinity and evangelical Christianity, tracing its development and its effects on contemporary evangelical culture.

Monday, October 21 - Friday, October 25:

As the month comes to a close, we ask for prayers for those traveling to Chicago for the 18th Annual gathering of The Society for Ricoeur Studies (October 24-27). This year’s theme is "Imagination and Metaphor: Paul Ricoeur at Chicago, 50th Anniversary," and we are excited to have several ICS-affiliated scholars presenting at this prestigious event. Ron Kuipers is giving a paper entitled, "The Subversive Force of the Imaginary: Christianity as Radical Possibility in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur." Likewise, Héctor Acero Ferrer is giving a paper entitled, "Imagining Futures beyond Violence: Historical Memory and Social Imagination in Post-Conflict Colombia." Other ICS and ICS-adjacent participants include Andrew Tebbutt (sessional instructor), Theoren Tolsma (MA 2022), and Stephanie Arel (Board of Trustees as of January 2025).

At the same time, please pray for those attending the Edvance Annual Gathering at Redeemer University on October 24. The theme of this year’s conference is "Pursuing Joy," and we pray that the teachers and administrators who attend will leave with a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper commitment to the joyful work of education.

Likewise, pray for Board of Trustees Chair, Dan Bereens, as he attends the Christian Educators Association Convention on October 24 and 25, centered on the theme "Faithful."

Monday, October 28 - Friday, November 1:

Finally, as ICS enters its reading week starting on October 28, we ask for your prayers for our students and faculty. This is a time for rest and reflection, and we pray that all will find the rejuvenation they need to continue their work with energy and passion.

Moreover, pray for Neal DeRoo as he spends this time in Pittsburgh at the exploratory workshop for the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience. The theme for this workshop is, "Experience and Non-Objects: Towards a Phenomenology of Indiscernibility."

Thank you for your continued prayers and support as we navigate this busy season. We are grateful for the ways that your prayers sustain and encourage us in our work.

Prayer Letter: September 2024

Monday, September 2 - Friday, September 6:

September marks the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year, and a continuation of distributive learning at ICS. This year, Senior Members will continue to offer virtual seminars, sessions, and guided readings to our Junior Members residing both in Toronto and elsewhere in the world. Our Junior Members are all at various stages of their programs, and as well as starting up classes once again, are also starting or continuing to work on their respective research and projects. Please pray for all our instructors and students, both new and returning, as they begin this new academic year at ICS.

We are looking forward to welcoming a number of new Junior Members this fall in our different programs! 

• Four new MA students: Clinton Stockwell, Tyler May-Gruthusen, Chris Christiansen, and Alayna Erickson.

• Four new MA-EL program students: Amanda Breimer, Keeler Kauffeldt, Danyse Nywening, and Brooklyn Sinclair.

• And one PhD student: Benjamin Strachan.

Please pray along with us that these JMs will have a successful start to their studies at ICS!

Monday, September 9 - Friday, September 13:

This is the first week of classes at ICS! Please especially pray for each Senior Member as they continue to find creative ways to teach course material virtually, dive deep into important and complex topics, and provide experiences that enhance a sense of community in their classrooms. Pray also for the students participating in each class that, despite the differences in time and place, it will be an inspiring and interactive learning experience for all! These are the courses to keep in your prayers this week and throughout the semester:

• Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation with Dr. Nik Ansell (Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00pm ET). This course will explore the Bible as the ongoing story of and for God and all God’s creatures, paying special attention to the way in which humanity’s attempt to find its way is interwoven with the story of the Divine presence and with the wisdom and promise of creation-new creation. In asking whether and how the biblical story may find its future in our ongoing narratives, we will attempt to identify which hermeneutical methods and sensitivities might help us discern its significance for present day life, including the academic enterprise.

• Cultivating Learning Communities of Belonging with Dr. Edith van der Boom (Blended Online Synchronous/Asynchronous). This is a course for instructional leaders and administrators considering school and classroom cultures. Course content will include attention to social and cultural contexts, racial justice, Indigenous perspectives, human sexuality, restorative practices, and how these topics impact and form school and classroom cultures. 

• Facing the Darkness: The (Human) Nature of Evil with Dr. Nik Ansell (Tuesdays, 10:00am-1:00pm ET). This interdisciplinary theology seminar shall probe the origin and nature of evil by engaging key biblical, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological resources. Central to the class discussions will be a sapiential (wisdom-oriented) re-reading of the Fall narrative of Genesis 3–4, set against the backdrop of the good, yet largely wild, creation of Genesis 1–2. In addition to surveying a variety of contemporary theodicies read up against the challenge offered by both “protest atheism” and the biblical lament literature (especially the book of Job), students shall also pay special attention to the correlation between victim and agent in the ongoing dynamics to “original sin” and to the concomitant role of fear in the construction of culture. 

• Philosophy at the Limit: Richard Kearney with Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers (Thursdays, 2:00-5:00pm ET). This course is a study of Kearney’s trilogy Philosophy at the Limit as well as his book Anatheism, focusing on his exploration of that “frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound.” Participants will examine Kearney’s attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur.

• Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy with Dr. Neal DeRoo (Tuesdays, 2:00-5:00pm ET). The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

• The Aesthetics of Compassion with Dr. Rebekah Smick (Thursdays, 10:00am-1:00pm ET). Looking to such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil, this course will investigate the place of compassion in Western philosophy and theology and the roles that art and imagination have played in the stimulation of compassionate response. 

• The Craft of Reflective Practice with Dr. Gideon Strauss (Blended Online Synchronous/Asynchronous). In this course we will learn how to do critical reflective practice, primarily by telling stories about our everyday professional lives. We will zoom in on the story of an ordinary day at work, and then zoom out to the story of our career to date, zoom out further to the story of our work community, and zoom out even further to the overarching story of God’s world. In the process we will learn qualitative research skills, receive an introduction to phenomenology (the philosophical study of lived experience), develop our own approach to praxis (that is, the craft of morally-oriented, theoretically-informed, and theory-generating critically reflective practice), and, most significantly, come to terms with who we are in what we do.

• The Radical Theopoetics of John D. Caputo with Dr. James Olthuis (Tuesdays, 6:00-9:00pm ET). This seminar will explore John D. Caputo’s Theopoetics, a "weak theology" of narratives, prayers and praise in response to the call of God in contrast to a "strong" theology of predicative claims about the existence and nature of God. 

Please continue to pray for our Senior Members, Junior Members, and students in these courses during this term. Pray that they might experience a close, communal learning environment as much as possible via Zoom and across various time zones.

Monday, September 16 - Friday, September 20:

We share the sad news that ICS Board Trustee and Former Board Chair Marci Frederick passed away on August 25, after a battle with cancer that spread aggressively to her brain in June. Marci was an ICS alum (M.Phil.F. 1992) and ICS Director of Library and Information Services (1992-98), and was a great friend to ICS throughout the years. Marci was a person of fierce intelligence and abiding faith, a keen advocate for social justice, and an engaging interpreter and preacher of the Word. We ask you to join us in prayer as we mourn her passing and celebrate her life and herculean contribution to our community. A memorial service for Marci has been planned at Immanuel Mennonite Church, and will be livestreamed on Tuesday, September 17th at 6:00pm EDT. (Follow this link for the memorial service livestream: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/memorial-service-for-marci-fre/1016575846616517/)

We would appreciate prayers for the Leadership Team as it continues to work out the ICS strategic plan, which is geared to enhancing our academic programming and increasing our tuition revenue and institutional longevity. We pray also for the ICS Academic Council as it resumes the work of academic governance during this month. The council will focus on ICS's academic policies with regard to the assessment of student work during this term. Pray for clarity and wisdom in our thinking as we develop, and continue to implement, ways that will enable us to keep pursuing our goal of offering truly distinct educational opportunities to the students who come our way.

Please pray for those involved in preparing and contributing to our upcoming fall issue of Perspective as authors, editors, organizers, designers, and printers. This issue will highlight some of the voices and stories of our incoming Junior Members (among others) and should offer an exciting glimpse into their work. We ask our Lord to grant all contributors creativity and insight as we aim to send this issue to our supporters in the coming months.

Monday, September 23 - Friday, September 27:

We ask for your prayers for Director of Finance Harley Dekker as he prepares for the auditors and the preparation of the year-end statements this month. This is always a very detailed and lengthy process, so please pray for strength and clarity of mind for Harley as he seeks to complete this task as quickly as possible in the midst of the many other aspects of administration in which he is involved.

During the month of September, the CPRSE team will be planning its annual cycle of research projects, publications, and public outreach events. This year, many of our events and publications will focus on questions surrounding the notion of tradition, particularly as our institution seeks to carry forward the rich tradition of inquiry and scholarship that animates the work and lives of our Senior and Junior Members. Please pray that the CPRSE’s work will be fruitful and responsible, and that the programming offered can serve as a space for transformative reflection for our community and beyond.

We pray for the families and households, friends and faith communities of the members of our ICS scholarly community. We are grateful for their company and encouragement, aware of their sacrifices, and prayerful for their flourishing. As summer shifts into fall, we pray for the adjustments in our schedules and in our priorities to go well, and for our hearts to beat along with the seasonal rhythms of our lives. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3, NRSV).

Wild God

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. 

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;

the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

 

The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,
and strips the forest bare;

and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

 

—Psalm 29:7-9

 

Mere days after wildfires ravaged Jasper, Alberta, my family and I were getting ready to attend a Kuipers family reunion at my sister’s cottage near Golden, BC. Golden was under an evacuation alert at that time too. Fortunately, the winds changed, the temperature cooled, and we were able to go ahead with our much-anticipated visit.
 
At a bookstore in Golden, on a hazy day choked by smoke from the surrounding fires, I chanced upon a book by the musician Nick Cave, a long form interview with his friend Seán O’Hagen entitled Faith, Hope, and Carnage. What an apt title, I thought, and bought the book. While this book is many things, it is also a moving testimony to Cave’s Christian faith, a hard-won faith, born of suffering, in a God who, hovering over the roiling and dangerous possibilities of the fathomless deep, yet considered it well worth the risk to plunge into that abyss and transform its sheer possibility into a liveable cosmos, a wild world for God to love and for all God’s creatures to frolic.
 
But the history of this cosmos of proliferating possibility is also a history of carnage. In this world, taking up the joyful gift of life also means accepting the inevitability of suffering and grief. It’s part of the deal. The wild God blew a hole through Nick Cave’s life when he lost his teenage son Arthur in 2015. Instead of turning inward, however, Cave decided to work through his grief publicly, through his music and writing, in the hope that sharing his story might help others enduring similar pain.
 
Surprisingly, in the bowels of his pain and suffering, Cave discovered in himself and other grievers an emerging zeal, “an audacity in the face of things, a kind of reckless refusal to submit to the condition of this world.” (159). Simply sharing his grief, he noticed, also created the possibility for people to show him their care, offering small, loving touches and gestures that helped carry him and his wife Susie through their grief, leading him to draw the following incredible conclusion:
 

…I came to the conclusion that the world wasn’t bad, at all—in fact, what we think of as bad, or as sin, is actually suffering. And that the world is not animated by evil, as we are so often told, but by love, and that, despite the suffering of the world, or maybe in defiance of it, people mostly just cared. Susie and I instinctively understood that we needed to move towards this loving force, or perish. (170)

There is a deep message in Cave’s journey through the work of mourning—a journey from carnage to, dare I say, glory. His moving story of opening himself up to receiving a loving, albeit wild force amid his suffering, indeed a force that carried him through his suffering, will stay with me for a long time. It is a message well worth pondering at the start of a new school year, as we help students engage the pieces of our Maker’s wild, broken creation, and encourage them to discern the different, surprising ways these scattered shards can be put back together again.
 
Shalom, friends
Ron Kuipers

In Memoriam: Marci Frederick, Fierce Intelligence Meets Abiding Faith (September 30, 1960-August 25, 2024)

 by Ron Kuipers

Gay Marcille Frederick, or “Marci” as she was known to her family and many friends, first walked through ICS’s doors at 229 College Street as a master’s student in 1987. Since then, she was a constant and encouraging presence in the life of our academic community.

In addition to being an ICS alum, she served as ICS’s Director of Library and Information Services from 1992-98, and later as an ICS Board Trustee from 2018 until her passing on August 25 from an aggressive brain cancer. She ably undertook the responsibilities of ICS Board Chair from 2022-23, until her cancer treatments forced her to step down from that role. 

Marci achieved ICS’s Master of Philosophical Foundations degree in 1992, defending a thesis entitled Haydn White on Historical Narrative: A Critique under the supervision of C. Thomas McIntire. This was one of three master’s degrees Marci earned, in addition to a Master of Library Science and a Master of Arts in American History, both from the University of Wisconsin.

I first met Marci in 1992 when I joined ICS as a master’s student. Among many delightful details, I remember her passion for and deep knowledge of all things baseball, which she would share with anyone interested during our 3 o’clock tea times. I also recall when, as librarian, and after learning that I had a keen interest in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she gifted me a copy of his Philosophical Investigations that the library was discarding. I still own that green, hardbound copy, which has since accumulated many years worth of repeated readings, underlining, and marginalia—and is even more precious to me now.

In the role of Library Director, Marci carried her passion for supporting students in their studies from ICS to King’s University in Edmonton (1998-2006), Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois (2006-15), and finally Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia (2015-24). In fact, she remained my de facto librarian long after she left ICS. As I perused my record of email exchanges with Marci in preparing this memorial, I came across many spontaneously sent emails with links to book notices and reviews, just because she knew I would be interested. That was Marci.

Marci was also a passionate advocate for social justice, both on campus and off. She served on university committees on environmental sustainability, racial/ethnic diversity, and gender equality. Her sense of justice was formed by her Mennonite faith and her love of scripture. Marci was a regular preacher, and at the time of her death she was working toward the completion of a Master of Divinity degree. In June of 2023, she sent me a copy of a wonderful sermon she preached on 2 Corinthians 2:12-3:6. Her message was about how God in Christ calls us to share our power by giving it away. Two memorable lines from her sermon stay with me: “God is not concerned about getting something back. God is concerned with passing something on.”; and “Sharing power is the gospel, because sharing power is what love does.”

Marci was to me that rare Christian who practiced what she preached, sharing her life until the end. She is survived by her husband Paul Cook, and her child Blue, also known as Jocelyn.

In Memoriam: Arvilla Sipma, an Inspiration to Adventure and Difference

by Dean Dettloff

Whenever Arvilla Sipma (1947-2024) was preparing to travel, which she did often, whether to somewhere new or somewhere familiar, she always seemed to have a related book, usually an historical novel. Reading was one of many means by which Arvilla primed herself to receive and explore the world around her, and she was eager to invite others into that exploration. If my wife Emily and I were planning to go somewhere, she would immediately recall a book or article she had read about this or that place, from Barcelona to Kathmandu, and more likely than not she could produce it within the day from a basement filled with texts. 

Her adventurous nature was in stark contrast to her origins in rural Iowa and Minnesota, where she grew up on a farm in a challenging environment. It did not take long for her to travel, first to university, at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then to Paris and across Europe. A bout of cancer as a young woman gave her a perduring feeling that her life was a gift, one she was determined not to take for granted. Landing in Toronto, Arvilla made a career teaching languages with foreign students, always interested in the wide variety of human experience. From taking courses at the Institute for Christian Studies to living in the Innstead Co-op, Arvilla found a community of courageous and creative young people interested in faith, thoughtfulness, and justice.

Arvilla was an adventurous sort not only geographically, but spiritually, too. She had converted to Catholicism, but she clearly retained her formation as a Calvinist in the ICS mold, coming to inhabit the two spiritualities seamlessly. As a Catholic student at ICS myself, her example was a comfort to me, showing that one didn’t need to make some final choice, but could appreciate wherever the God of love and justice was speaking. Whether at Beaches Presbyterian Church where she and her husband Jim Olthuis attended or at Our Lady of Lourdes, a parish served by the Jesuits where she also went to Mass, Arvilla loved the Lord and her neighbor without friction between her ecumenical commitments.

When Emily and I moved to Toronto from the US, both from small towns ourselves, Arvilla became a fast friend. Eager to support ICS students, not only because of her marriage to longtime ICS Senior Member (now Emeritus) Jim Olthuis but also because of her own history with the Institute, Arvilla quickly welcomed us into the home that she and Jim had lovingly nested in not far from our apartment. Through the hospitality of Arvilla and Jim, we got to know the coffee shops, restaurants, characters, and community of our neighborhood.

As US expatriates, we routinely discussed the strange feeling of living outside of one’s home country, even one next door, especially as so many bizarre events have transpired in our shared country of origin. Arvilla would at once wish US Americans would take a wider view of the world, something she had worked so hard to cultivate, and in the same breath beam with pride when discussing an author or activist who shared our national identity. And as dual citizens, we would discuss the many benefits of the country we had all come to call home, while acknowledging so many of its problems mirrored the ones across the border. 

It strikes me only now, reflecting on Arvilla’s identities and generosity, how postmodern her life in fact was, embracing what others might take to be contradictions—Catholicism and Protestantism, dual citizenship, rural and urban life, etc.—as non-oppositional differences, unified in the course of a life well-lived and open to the Other.

What I will remember most about Arvilla is her love and care. It would be typical to find Arvilla in a coffee shop, where she was known warmly by staff, writing letters on stationary to friends and relatives, some of whom she had been writing with for decades. She talked regularly about her brothers, whom she cared for deeply, and about her cousins in North America, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden. 

Most of all, her relationship with Jim was one of mutuality, tenderness, and excitement, supporting one another’s well-being and ambitions and making room for each other’s unique expression of “human be(com)ing,” to borrow a phrase from Jim.

Arvilla passed unexpectedly in hospital on June 2nd, following six weeks of illness. As she joins the many saints who have preceded her, I find myself thinking of her willingness to take risks, her generosity and openness to newness, and the abiding love with which she cared for so many of us, all of which she will undoubtedly take with her on this next adventure.

Arvilla Sipma, pray for us.

* * *

Arvilla was an avid supporter of the work of the Institute for Christian Studies. At the request of the family, donations may be made in Arvilla's memory to ICS at www.icscanada.edu/support or by phone at 416-979-2331 ext. 223.

Héctor Acero Ferrer Appointed Director of Lifelong Learning

ICS is delighted to announce the appointment of Héctor Acero Ferrer to the position of interim Director of Lifelong Learning on a term-limited contract basis starting on August 1, 2024.  Héctor has been the Associate Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics (CPRSE) at ICS since the beginning of the 2017-2018 academic year and co-editor of ICS's Perspective magazine since September 2016, and he continues in those positions. Since 2022, Héctor has also been the Interim Program Coordinator of the BA in Christian Studies & Global Citizenship of Martin Luther University College at Wilfrid Laurier University. In that capacity he has not only chaired the BA Program Committee and taught extensively in the program, but has also facilitated the review of the BA in Christian Studies & Global Citizenship and  the creation of a new BA degree program. Héctor has been the Graduate Student Director of the Society for Ricoeur Studies since October 2021 and the Chair of the Young Adult Committee of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) since May 2021. He also served as the President of the Board of Directors of Shalem Mental Health Network from 2016 to 2021.

Héctor completed a Master of Divinity degree at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto during 2010-2013 with a thesis titled, “Ministry as Theological Therapy: A Reinterpretation of ‘The Pastoral’ through Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Language-Games” and a Master of Arts in Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies during 2013-2016 with a thesis titled, “Liberating Tradition: An Exploration of Liberation Theology through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics.” At present Héctor is working on a doctorate in philosophy in the joint PhD program of the Institute for Christian Studies and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with a dissertation on the topic, "Imagining Liberation Amidst Violence: Liberation Theology, Social Imagination, and the Voices of Conflict Survivors in Colombia’s Ecclesial Base Communities." 

In addition to many published papers, reports, and a book chapter, Héctor was one of the editors of both Gestures of Grace: Essays in Honour of Robert Sweetman (2023) and Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart (2021). His two most recent conference papers were presented in 2023: in June, at the Sixième édition des ateliers d’été du Fonds Ricœur: Soi-même comme un autre in Paris, with the title, “Our-self as Another? Understanding the Development of Narrative Identity in Ecclesial Base Communities through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur (Part I),” and in October, at the 17th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference in Toronto, with the title, “Our-self as Another? Understanding the Development of Narrative Identity in Ecclesial Base Communities through the Lens of Paul Ricoeur (Part II).” Héctor was also instrumental in designing and presenting the recent ICS conference Beyond Culture Wars.

In his new role as ICS Director of Lifelong Learning Héctor will be tasked primarily with conducting a comprehensive review of the institution’s current public outreach initiatives and a survey of potential areas of growth in the field of continuing education, with the goal of developing a cohesive lifelong learning program in collaboration with the administration and faculty. We are grateful for Héctor's service in this new role and welcome his insights and expertise in developing this initiative at ICS.

Neal DeRoo Appointed Interim Director of MA-PhD Program

The Institute for Christian Studies is pleased to announce the appointment of Neal DeRoo to the position of Interim Director of the MA-PhD Program for a twelve-month period as of July 1, 2024. Dr. DeRoo has been a Senior Member and Professor of Philosophy at ICS since the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year. Before coming to ICS, Dr. DeRoo served the Christian community in a variety of ways, including as Canada Research Chair in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Religion at The King's University in Edmonton, as Director of the Andreas Center for Reformed Scholarship and Service at Dordt College, and on various boards, including the Editorial Board of Christian Scholar's Review and the Board of Trustees of the ICS (2014-2016). He was also instrumental in designing the recent ICS conference Beyond the Culture Wars.

In addition to his work in Christian scholarship, Dr. DeRoo is also well known in academic philosophical circles, where his work reinterpreting spirituality as a foundational element of how we experience the world has made important contributions to topics as varied as racialization and genderization to how we worship God. He is the author or editor of eight books (with a ninth forthcoming), and has been invited to give lectures and lead seminars throughout North America and Europe.

These extensive connections throughout both Christian scholarship and academic philosophy will serve him well in his new role, as the Director of the MA-PhD Program will be tasked primarily with coordinating a comprehensive review of ICS's MA-PhD program during the 2024-2025 academic year, helping shape that program and its role at the ICS for the next 10 years. A secondary responsibility will be to work with ICS's Recruitment Coordinator in the recruitment of students into this program.

We are grateful for Dr. DeRoo's service in this role and welcome his insights and expertise in shaping ICS academic programming.

Prayer Letter: Summer 2024

Monday, June 3 - Friday, June 7:

On Sunday, June 2nd, Arvilla Sipma, beloved wife of Senior Member Emeritus Jim Olthuis, passed away after a battle with ongoing illness. Arvilla was a dear member of the ICS family, and a gracious host to many events, formal and informal, at her and Jim's home in Toronto. Please pray with us for Arvilla’s family—and especially Jim—that they might feel God’s comfort as they mourn her deeply-felt loss. 

On Friday, June 7th, PhD candidate Meg Giordano will defend her dissertation in the joint ICS-Vrije Universiteit PhD program on site in Amsterdam. The title of Meg’s project is “In Pursuit of Human Flourishing: A Study in Personal Violence and Its Remedy, as Informed by Thomas Aquinas with Help from Aristotle and Proclus.” Please pray for safe travels and peace of mind as Meg prepares for her defense, and for her co-promoters Prof. Dr. Marije Martijn (VU) and Dr. Robert Sweetman (ICS) and the other members of the defense committee as they prepare to discuss her research.

In early May, Dr. J. Richard Middleton retired from Roberts Wesleyan University. You can read a reflection from his close longtime colleague Brian Walsh here. Please also join us in prayers of gratitude for Richard’s career and many contributions to Reformational scholarship, both in writing and in teaching, and to the lives of believers around the world.

Monday, June 10 - Friday, June 14:

After a joyous Convocation on May 24th, we lift up each of our 2024 graduates in prayer as they close this chapter of their respective journeys and look to the next. This year we celebrated the hard work and successful project completion of Steven Jaspers-Fayer (MWS), Julia Henderson (MA), and Richard Peters (MA-EL). We give thanks for the time each of these Junior Members spent in study with us and the many ways each of them contributed to the ICS community, and we wish them well in the next stage of their professional and personal lives. Congratulations!

We also wish to extend prayers of gratitude to each of the members of our Board of Trustees and Senate for the deliberative work each body participated in during their respective annual meetings in late May. We are particularly grateful to Board Chair Dan Beerens for his leadership of the Board’s discussions of budgets and other matters of financial planning, and to Senate Chair Pamela Beattie for her leadership of the Senate in discussions of academic oversight and planning. 

On May 23rd, the daughter of Pamela Beattie, Cecilia, was admitted to the ER where doctors discovered brain tumors and spinal fluid buildup. Last week, Cecilia underwent a successful surgery to determine the extent of the problem, but she will now be embarking on a long journey of chemo and radiation to shrink the tumors and stop the progression of the cancer. We ask that you keep Cecilia and the Beattie family in your prayers during this difficult time, and we pray for swift healing for Cecilia.

Monday, June 17 - Friday, June 21:

Please pray this week for the students and instructor of the final of our online Spring-Summer 2024 courses as they prepare for their time of study together. On June 17th, Dean Dettloff’s online course God of Solidarity: Liberation Theology as Social Movement begins. This course attends to the development of liberation theology amid the wave of 20th-century liberation movements that swept across the globe, with an eye toward the future and legacy of liberation theology in the 21st century. While liberation theology is often studied for its doctrinal content, it is also irreducibly social, historical, and political, emerging from and accountable to people’s movements. There’s still time to apply, so email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu if you’d like to join! Please also pray with us for fruitful discussions among participants as this course gets underway.

June 16-18th, Senior Member Neal DeRoo will be participating in the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (EPTC) conference as part of Congress 2024 at McGill University in Montreal. This is a major national gathering of academics within the humanities and social sciences, so please pray with us for many learning and networking opportunities for Neal as he discusses topics of shared interest together with other colleagues in the field.

Monday, June 24 - Friday, June 28:

We continue to accept late applications to start an ICS program of study throughout the summer. We pray for those applicants whose materials we’ve already received, that they might be granted wisdom and clarity as they arrange any other necessary details to start their studies in the fall. And we pray for any would-be applicants still in the process of deciding or finding their way to ICS, that they might be able to see what ICS has to offer them in their studies and their journeys.

June 30th also marks the end of our fiscal year. We’ve been so grateful for the financial support we’ve received from each of our donors over this past year. Your giving is absolutely vital to the work that we do and the blessings that we have to offer the students that walk through our doors. Thank you for your generosity! We also thank God for the dedicated work of our Advancement and Finance teams in seeking out and stewarding these gifts and keeping ICS running day to day.

July

On July 1st, ICS alumnus and Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University Dr. James K. A. Smith begins a 5-year appointment as a Distinguished Associate of ICS, following a unanimous vote by the ICS Senate in favour of the appointment. You can read more about the appointment here. Please also pray with us for blessings on Jamie’s continued teaching, research, and writing. 

As the summer continues, we ask for prayers for all the ICS staff, Senior Members, and Junior Members—that everyone might find chances to relax and enjoy God’s creation during these weeks, catch up on planning and other projects, and really dig into reading, writing, and other research projects. We are grateful for the gifts and insights that each member of our community brings, and we pray that this seasonal change of pace may be a blessing to everyone.

August

Please also pray this month for three of our MA-EL summer courses: Called to Teach with Edith van der Boom, Lead From Where You Are with Gideon Strauss, and What’s Christian About Christian Education? with Neal DeRoo. Each of these courses have their final three sessions on August 6-8th. Pray for continued creative energy for Edith, Gideon, and Neal as they lead the courses, and for all the participants that they might find joy and inspiration in their learning experiences together.

Fall 2024 courses are now listed on the ICS website. We have an exciting array of topics being covered by our Senior Members this semester, and all of these courses are available for online participation. More details will be made available over the summer, but you can check the full course list out now to see if anything catches your eye at www.icscanada.edu/fall-courses. Please share information about these courses widely within your communities! And please pray for our Senior Members as they start preparing over the summer for the start of their courses in the fall:

• Biblical Foundations and Facing the Darkness, taught by Nik Ansell
• The Aesthetics of Compassion, taught by Rebekah Smick
• Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy, taught by Neal DeRoo
• The Craft of Reflective Practice, taught by Gideon Strauss
• Philosophy at the Limit: Richard Kearney, taught by Ronald A. Kuipers
• Cultivating Learning Communities of Belonging, taught by Edith van der Boom

The Power of Mist

For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

—James 3:16-18

At the most recent meeting of the ICS Board of Trustees, Board Chair Dan Beerens opened the meeting with a reflection on a passage from the letter of James. It was not the passage cited above, but one that comes later, where James admonishes those arrogant enough to think they can determine their own futures: “Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)

What I found intriguing about Dan’s reflection is how he quickly moved past the admonishment, and proceeded to take James’s claim that human life is but mist seriously and positively, asking the question: Does mist matter? Would we perceive our lives differently, less arrogantly, if we took the misty nature of our existence more seriously?

In Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, the poet Christian Wiman moves in a similar direction when he considers the fragility and isolation of human lives considered apart from their relationships: “Selves are nothing but memories of selves, and memories but the wispy entities that time and mind have conspired to keep. It’s a wonder we don’t walk through each other like ghosts.” (p. 75)

Why don’t we walk through each other? Maybe we do sometimes? I know that so often in our rapidly polarizing world we too easily look past each other. James’ letter has a lesson to teach us here, too. The letter urges us to turn from our “selfish ambition” and “boastful confidence”—our navel-gazing obduracy—to a wisdom from above that is, in stark contrast, gentle and willing to yield.

Which puts me back in mind of mist, and Dan’s question, “does mist matter?” It seems to me that mist only matters once it realizes that it is mist. Mist only matters when it realizes that, in and through its wispy, fleeting existence, it nevertheless has the power to condense on the porous surfaces of the cold creatures surrounding it and be transformed into life-giving water.

The good news here is that we are this mist, and when we turn from ourselves toward others with mercy and good fruit, we experience that wonderful condensation that transforms our very being precisely because we have responded to someone’s need. “And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

Shalom, friends!

Ron Kuipers

James K. A. Smith Appointed Distinguished Associate of ICS

The Institute for Christian Studies is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. James K. A. Smith as a Distinguished Associate for a five-year term, starting on July 1, 2024, following a unanimous vote by the ICS Senate in favour of the appointment. With this appointment ICS recognizes Dr. Smith as a spiritually kindred scholar of outstanding competence and reputation who contributes to the work of ICS. The appointment follows closely after Dr. Smith’s contribution as a keynote speaker to the 2024 ICS conference Beyond Culture Wars. Dr. Smith is an alumnus of the MA program in philosophy of the ICS.

Jamie Smith is an internationally renowned Christian philosopher whose many books include The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (2000), Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (2009), You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016), and most recently How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (2022).

Dr. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he occupies the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology & Worldview, and Visiting Professor of Divinity at Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He was Editor-in-chief of Image journal from 2019 to 2024 and Editor-in-chief of Comment magazine from 2013 to 2018. In addition to many other awards and distinctions, Dr. Smith will be the Thomas F. Martin Fellow at the Augustinian Institute of Villanova University during the Fall 2024 term.

In addition to celebrating the contributions he has made as a Christian philosopher, the ICS hopes that this association will nurture scholarly friendships in our academic community and allow our Junior Members in particular to benefit from Jamie’s wisdom.

CBC Ideas to Air Beyond Culture Wars Keynotes

The radio show Ideas from the CBC will be airing audio recordings of the two keynote addresses from the Beyond Culture Wars conference this past April. On Wednesday, June 5, Ideas will air the episode "On Culture Wars in Christianity: Philosopher James K. A. Smith." The episode will air live on Radio One at 8:00pm, and will be available for on demand listening on the CBC Listen website afterward. 

A second episode featuring the keynote address from Kristin Kobes Du Mez will air later this fall. We will share more information about that episode closer to the air date.

June 5 Episode Summary

"Culture wars" divide faith communities, as well as secular society. But Christian thinker and philosopher James K. A. Smith argues that solidarity is possible, and a state that exists beyond our identification with what we know and believe. The only way to get there, in his view, is through what he calls "the mystic crucible of unknowing." The Calvin University professor is a Canadian-born, U.S.-based philosopher and author. He spoke about Christianity and social division in April 2024 at a conference called 'Beyond Culture Wars,' sponsored by the Institute for Christian Studies, and Martin Luther University College at Wilfrid Laurier University. You'll hear his talk, and a conversation with IDEAS producer Sean Foley.

Prayer Letter: May 2024

Monday, May 6 - Friday, May 10:

Reformational economist and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Bob Goudzwaard passed away on April 20. His memorial service took place on April 26. If you would like to watch the recording of the service, it will be available online for a short time. Please join us in prayers of consolation for Bob’s colleagues, friends, family as they mourn his loss and await reunion in resurrection hope.

Two ICS staff have also lost family members this past month. Please join us in prayer for them and for their extended families as they navigate the travel, logistics, and mourning that accompany these losses. We pray that each of them may feel God’s comfort in spending time with their families and celebrating the lives of their loved ones.

Please pray this month for the instructors and students in our online Spring-Summer 2024 courses as they prepare for their time of study together. Three of these courses have already started, but one starts this week on May 7th: State, Society, and Religion in Hegel’s Philosophy (with Andrew Tebbutt). This course considers the interrelation of political, social, and religious life in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Explore the political and social conditions of human experience, Hegel’s account of the human engagement in ‘absolute spirit’, and Hegel’s role in the historical construction of the modern West’s category of religion. There’s still time to apply so email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu if you’d like to learn how to join! Please also pray with us for fruitful discussions among participants as this course gets underway.

Monday, May 13 - Friday, May 17:

We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in the Beyond Culture Wars conference April 18-20th! In particular, we’d like to thank keynote speakers Kristin Kobes Du Mez and James K.A. Smith for their contributions to our collective conversation, our Senior Members and colleagues from fellow institutions for leading workshops, and our partners at Martin Luther University College for graciously hosting the event with us. To everyone who traveled to Waterloo to attend and joined us online: we are very appreciative of your active participation in the sessions and workshops! Thanks for making this event a huge success!

On May 20-22, Academic Dean Gideon Strauss will be participating in the 2024 Crouse Seminar in Toronto. Dr. Mark Elliott, Professor of Biblical and Historical Theology at Highland Theological College in Scotland and Professorial Fellow at Wycliffe College, will lead this year’s Seminar on Augustine's City of God. Please pray that this will be a fulfilling time of study, conversation, and camaraderie for Gideon and all those in attendance.

On May 20-23, Senior Member Neal DeRoo, PhD candidate Mark Standish, and alumnus Theoren Tolsma will all be presenting at the joint Annual Conference of The Society of Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) and The Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists (ICNAP) at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. The theme of the conference is “Phenomenology at the Borders.” Please pray for their safe travels and that they may enjoy rich conversations with peers at this conference.

Monday, May 20 - Friday, May 24:

This is the week of our end-of-year celebrations and events! First up, our annual Senate meeting is taking place on Thursday, May 23. Many ICS Senators will travel to Toronto in order to spend the day considering key academic concerns and strategizing academic plans for the future, with special care taken to steward our particular intellectual legacy at ICS. Please join us in prayers of gratitude for each of these Senators and the time and expertise they share with the ICS community in this way. Please also pray for the ICS Academic Office as they arrange the numerous details of this meeting.

The following day on Friday, May 24, the ICS Board of Trustees also has its annual meeting in Toronto. Board Members will gather in person and online to attend to important budgetary and business matters of ICS. Please join us in prayers of gratitude for each of these Trustees and the time, wisdom, and insights they provide in the task of stewarding ICS’s financial gifts and responsibilities. Please pray in particular for Board Chair Dan Beerens as he leads discussions during this meeting and for the ICS Finance office and Executive Leadership Team as they provide reports and substantively contribute to the planning.  

Also on May 24, we will be hosting our 2024 Convocation ceremony at Christ Church Deer Park in Toronto. The ceremony will feature a convocation address by President Ronald A. Kuipers. Please pray for each of our three graduands whose academic accomplishments at ICS we will be celebrating this evening. This is a wonderful opportunity for the broader ICS community to gather and hear more about the diverse projects our Junior Members have brought to completion and to celebrate their achievements. 

Monday, May 27 - Friday, May 31:

Our final Summer 2024 course will begin June 10th: God of Solidarity: Liberation Theology as a Social Movement (w/ Dean Dettloff). In the latter half of the 20th century, a wave of liberation movements swept across the globe as colonized and exploited people undertook seismic struggles for self-determination. In this class, consider liberation theology in historical perspective—specifically its Latin American expressions—examining its relationship to a revolution in global Christianity and revolutions in various political contexts. If you would like to participate in this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. And please pray with us for a rich learning experience for all involved in this course.

Please join us in prayer as we near the end of our fiscal year, that we might receive a strong response to our annual spring appeal. Our appeal mailing, along with the newest issue of Perspective, is being mailed out now! In this issue, you’ll be able to read some reflections on collaboration, and its importance to ICS as a Christian educational institution. We give thanks for the issue’s contributors, particularly our friends and colleagues at the Toronto School of Theology, and we give thanks for the generosity of our supporters so far this year. We rely on your gifts to meet our budget goals and we’re grateful for your continued support of the vital work of Christian education! 

What Time is It?

Walk wisely toward those who are outside, rescuing lost time.

—Colossians 4:5 (Revised Geneva Translation)

In his brief but profound book How to Inhabit Time, my good friend (and ICS alumnus) James K.A. Smith introduces us to “the art of spiritual timekeeping” (see HIT, 16 ff.) This art, Smith tells us, attunes us to something more than chronological time, which the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin describes as “homogenous, empty time,” where one moment is qualitatively indistinct from the next, just another tick of the clock (for this and more, see Benjamin’s profound Theses on the Philosophy of History).

As Jamie points out, scripture often uses another Greek word, kairos, to speak of a different kind of time. Unlike chronos, Smith says, kairos names “a fullness of time, a time charged in a way that can’t be simply measured” (HIT, 18). This is the time that shelters the messianic possibility of redemption, a possibility which we might say inhabits chronological time like a wound coil, ready to spring into actuality at any moment.

In its translation of Colossians 4:5, the Revised Geneva Translation does a great job of evoking this kairological understanding of time. The New Revised Standard Version translates the Greek phrase in question, ton kairon exagorazomenoi, as “making the most of the time,” which to my ear sounds way too chronological. That last word, exagorazomenoi, literally means “to buy back” or “to buy out of,” and is often translated as “redeem.” We are closer here to the idea of “rescue,” I submit, than we are to the idea of “making the most of”!

The Revised Geneva translation provokes us to think more deeply about what Paul might be saying about time. In what way is our time lost, and how can it be rescued? Smith tells us that “spiritual timekeeping tries to discern where the Spirit’s restoration is already afoot in creation’s groaning” (HIT, 18). Could our attempts at such discernment be the way that we “walk wisely toward those who are outside,” thereby giving witness to God’s transformative work in the world, in time? Could that be what it means to rescue lost time?

So what time is it? Is it the time that is lost or the time that can be rescued? We put our hope and trust that God in Christ is bringing the latter to fruition, even as we are invited to participate in this dramatic salvage operation in our time. As Smith tells it: “In spiritual timekeeping, the watchword is ‘discernment’; faithfulness requires knowing when we are in order to discern what we are called to do” (HIT, 19). 

ICS’s Mission Statement reminds us that “the Gospel’s message of renewal shapes our pursuit of wisdom.” Stated in more explicitly kairological terms, we might say that “the Gospel’s hope for the rescue of lost time shapes our daily dance of (Smith again) ‘keeping time with the Spirit’.”

Shalom, friends!

Ron Kuipers

In Memoriam: Bob Goudzwaard, Friend of ICS

by Mark Vander Vennen

On April 20, 2024, Bob Goudzwaard, Christian economist, politician and academic scholar, died peacefully, surrounded by the love and care of his children and grandchildren. He had recently celebrated his 90th birthday. At ICS, we mourn his loss but give thanks to God for the gift of Bob—for this cherished friend whose scholarship has been so formative for ICS.

Goudzwaard was passionate about justice, sustainability, the needs of the poor, and care for people and the creation. He moved seamlessly from brilliant Scriptural exegesis to the structural roots of Western culture to complex economic arguments. He was a paragon of hope and a dear friend to many. 

Two early influences significantly shaped Goudzwaard’s future direction. He studied economics under Jan Tinbergen, the first Nobel prize-winner in economics. He also took lectures from J.P.A. Mekkes, one of the founders of reformational philosophy. From Mekkes, he learned to think “the other way around.” Rather than formulate principles and apply them to reality, Mekkes taught him to look first at reality, and then to dig deeper to find the ideological and spiritual impulses that lie structurally underneath. This approach is evident in all of the ground-breaking analyses of Western social and economic theory and practice that Goudzwaard undertook—analyses that were and continue to be far ahead of his time. 

Goudzwaard became the primary articulator of “the economy of enough.” To give a sense of how isolated this pioneering work left him, consider that in 1971, discussions took place with the Free University of Amsterdam about a professorship there. In an interview in 2023, Goudzwaard noted that the dean of the Economics Department told him that “there was opposition to me coming as a professor in the economics faculty, not for political reasons, but for academic reasons—I would confuse the students.” This was because of his insistence to link ethics to economics, and to question the drive to pursue economic growth at all costs. As a result, he was hired as an economist in the Social Faculty. “My books were not available in the Economics Faculty library.” Nevertheless, “50 years after the visit from the dean, the ideas and concepts that I defended are now broadly taken up and taught at the Free University.”   

Goudzwaard’s magisterial work, Capitalism and Progress, was published in 1976. Some of its content was developed in lectures that he delivered at ICS. In it he critiques equally capitalism and socialism as children of the Enlightenment pursuit of human progress expressed as limitless expansion in material prosperity. Each is a materialist framework. Each displays a fixation on the production side of the economy focused on government involvement in the means of production—“freedom from” for capitalism, “control over” for Marxism. By contrast, the economy of enough looks to the consumption side of the economy, to reign in the insatiable pursuit of harmful desires. Goudzwaard was not “anti-market”; instead, in an already wealthy society, he opposed a market-driven economy. He advocated a care-driven economy which uses markets, a slackening of material expansion to create growth in care for people and the environment. 

In 1977 Goudzwaard was the lead author of the election platform of the newly formed Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) political party, entitled, in a biblical reference, “Not By Bread Alone.” The CDA then became the lead partner in several successive governments. Goudzwaard was offered two cabinet positions but declined both, in part because prime minister Van Agt said he had “little affinity” for the party’s official platform.

In the early 1980s Goudzwaard, in a highly public decision, resigned from the CDA, because it approved a request from the United States government to install first-strike medium-range nuclear weapons of mass destruction on Dutch soil, aimed at the Soviet Union. Goudzwaard could not square this escalation of the Cold War nuclear arms race with his deeply held gospel convictions. He was shunned by many whom he had considered friends and colleagues; he paid a high personal price for standing by his convictions. With his integration of peace and economy (which he learned in part from Tinbergen), he continues to stand alone.

Goudzwaard was heavily involved in the ecumenical movement. He chaired large ecumenical development organizations in Holland and in Brussels. In 2004 he chaired a consultation between the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Council of Churches. Thanks in part to some churches in the UK, in 2009 his proposal to permit poor countries a modest amount of money creation to pay off debts made it to a G7 meeting but was rejected: instead the rich countries used that method to prop up their own economies. He took a lead in labour developments in The Netherlands and was heavily involved in anti-apartheid activities during the apartheid era in South Africa. His work on climate change provides a crucial dimension missing almost altogether in the current debate.

Bob was also a dear friend of ICS. He accepted an appointment as Senior Member at ICS in 1971, but had to decline because the Canadian health system could not pay for the special needs of his handicapped son, Theo. Nevertheless, as an ICS “Fellow,” he lectured often at ICS, over many years. He also served as a friend, advisor and “peacemaker” during some of the early tumultuous years at ICS. And in 2014 ICS honoured him by bestowing upon him an Honourary Doctorate degree.

All of the major newspapers in Holland carried articles profiling Goudzwaard on the occasion of his death. Capitalism and Progress is now being re-published in both Dutch and English. A new Bob Goudzwaard Foundation has been established to promote a sustainable and just economy supported by Goudzwaard’s ideas. And a biography of Goudzwaard, currently being written under the direction of the Free University, will be published in 2026.

I will conclude with Goudzwaard’s own words. In 1999 Bob gave the plenary address at an ICS family conference, delivered in the midst of the international Jubilee 2000 campaign, supported by Bono and many others, to reduce and forgive insupportable debt held by impoverished countries. In light of more recent debates about development aid, Goudzwaard’s words are, in my hearing, utterly contemporary:

Let me tell you a story. At the end of the conference in Lesotho—the ecumenical conference that dealt with the awful consequences of the ongoing debt burdens in Africa—I asked my black brothers and sisters if they could give me a message, even a one-line message, to bring back to the people and churches of the North. I will never forget their answer. They said that, poor though they were, they would never ask for more money. They used only one word. They said, “Speak about our dignity. We ask you and them to respect our dignity.”

What does such an answer mean? What are its implications? I have thought a lot about that. One of the main implications is that we should be willing to share with them access to resources, especially access to the sources of international money creation. But there is more. The reason that we do not share such access is not simply a question of a lack of good will. In fact, the reason may relate entirely to our own need for conversion, for repentance, for asking forgiveness from our debtors.

For what is dignity? Dignity implies that you do not treat the other as an object, not even as an object of your good will or your feelings of generosity. It was not until that meeting in Lesotho that I realized the degree to which that is the prevalent attitude of the North to the South. We want to be accepted and even admired by them for our desire to do good. But we become hostile as soon as they speak to us about our own evildoings, about our ways of bringing impoverishment upon them. The way in which we view poor nations and poor people is coloured much more by our own search for self-affirmation than by a desire to affirm others in their dignity.

The reality of sin therefore exists on our side—and the pain of knowing that we have sinned. And that cries out for Atonement, that undeniable part of Jubilee: “Please forgive us our debts, our trespasses of not recognizing the dignity of other persons and peoples, especially if they are poor, as we have already forgiven their debts and have stopped our acts of contributing to their impoverishment. And please Lord, show us new ways of justice and compassion by which to seek to affirm others more than ourselves.” 

- - - 

Mark Vander Vennen worked with Bob Goudzwaard—closely—for 42 years, serving as his primary English-language translator, editor, and occasional co-author. He is co-author, with Goudzwaard, of Hope in Troubled Times (Foreword by Desmond Tutu) and former Executive Director of the Shalem Mental Health Network.