Reformational Philosophy - The Different Generations

The Different Generations

Jan-Willem Dijkshoorn outlines four different generations of Dutch reformational philosophers. The first generation were Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd; the second generation: Hendrik Van Riessen, K. J. Popma, S. U. Zuidema and J. P. A. Mekkes; the third generation: Egbert Schuurman, Henk Geertsema and Sander Griffioen; the fourth generation: Jan Hoogland. Others in the third Generation or the fourth or in between should include Dr Maarten Verkerk whose book in translation will be read widely in North America, Trust and Power on the Shop Floor: An Ethnographical, Ethical, and Philosophical Study on Responsible Behaviour in Industrial Organizations .

Dijkshoorn's own cultural context leaves out of perception in the second generation Dr H. Evan Runner, who studied in the Netherlands but thereafter returned to the United States to teach at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Runner was a student of Vollenhoven who had also studied Dooyeweerd's work closely. Runner returned to the USA to teach, and from there sent back to the VU students to work on their doctorates under Vollenhoven in philosophy, one to do so under Dooyeweerd in jurisprudence, and others in an array of additional disciplines - such was Runner's influence! Many of these were children of families which had emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada or the USA, studied under H. Evan Runner at Calvin College, returned to the VU already bilingual, completed their doctorates, some to stay in the Netherlands and the VU, some to return to North America. Another person of this generation who deserves mention is the biologist Johann H. Diemer, the first secretary to the editorial board of Philosophia Reformata, whose work Nature and Miracle is still being read. He died early, at the age of 41, after having been a Nazi concentration camp prisoner.

In North America, the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) was established in Toronto to offer graduate degrees. The ICS has had a long cooperative relationship with the VU, the University of Toronto's federation of Theological Schools, and more recently also the University's Faculty of Philosophy. Thus, in North America, there is an active second generation of reformational philosophers in Calvin Seerveld; a third generation including Hendrik Hart, Bernard Zylstra (deceased), James Olthius, Arnold DeGraaff (afterward a practicing psychotherapist for 30 years and co-founder of Mono Therapy Center, Mono, Ontario), Thomas McIntire, Albert M. Wolters, William Rowe, George VanderVelde (a theologian who took his doctorate under G. C. Berkouwer); and fourth-generationers Paul Marshall and Robert Sweetman may be added - to name just those who have had active professorial roles at ICS.

There is now a numerous body of doctoral graduates of ICS through its cooperative program with the VU. At ICS itself, these now include:

• Lambert Zuidervaart (Senior Member of systematic philosophy at ICS)
• Ronald A. Kuipers (Senior Member of Philosophy of Religion at ICS)
• Doug Blomberg (who consulted with Dooyeweerd in regard to his dissertation in philosophy of education, written for an Australian university and is now Senior Member of Philosophy of Education at ICS)

Further graduates include:

• Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin (VU graduate, former ICS student, former Senior Member in Philosophical Aesthetics at ICS, now speaking and writing in England where her husband has taken a key post)

• Jonathan Chaplin (ICS student, London School of Economics in political science, former professor ICS political theory, now Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics at Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK.)

• James (Jamie) K.A. Smith (M. Phil. F. at ICS, PhD at Villanova under John D. Caputo). Smith has found a place for himself at the interface of Reformational Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Radical orthodoxy.

Many other names among the generations could be included, for instance, among those who taught at ICS, Redeemer University College, and College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State University, NJ), and .

• Dr Albert Wolters, studied under Runner, then Vollenhoven, taught at ICS, taught at Redeemer University College (Ontario), now retired, presently Research Fellow at the new Paideia Centre for Public Theology (Ancaster, Ontario).

• Dr Roy A. Clouser, now retired, has done much to popularise Reformational philosophy with his The Myth of Religious Neutrality (1st edn 1991; revd edn 2005).
• Recently Danie Strauss published an extensive investigation of the relationship between philosophy and the special sciences: Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines (715 pages), Grand Rapids: Paideia Press, 2009.