Prominent Calvinist Turns Freethinker
Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 7:26 pm
See here for a pdf of the article.
Précis: Born into a Calvinist family, shaped by a Calvinist catechism training, educated in the Calvinist private school system, and nurtured by a community that prized its Calvinist systematic theology, I was a Calvinist through and through. For 31 years my teaching career was deeply rooted in the Calvinism I had inherited from my community.
During most of that time it was a fruitful and satisfying experience. Nonetheless, stimulated in part by the manner in which some members of that community responded to my efforts to practice what I had learned from my best teachers, I eventually felt the need to extend my intellectual exploration into philosophical territories far outside the one provided by Calvinism. Did I complete the lengthy journey from Calvinism to Freethought? The listener will be the judge.
...In the early 1970’s I began teaching an astronomy course for students majoring in anything but the natural sciences. Stellar evolution — the developmental history of stars from their formation to their exhaustion
of energetic resources — was one of my favorite topics. I defined the word “evolution” carefully, but never avoided it. Open class discussion on evolutionary processes was always fruitful. I saw no problem with this candor, and my students offered no objections. Neither did the college administration.
Encouraged by these positive experiences, and eager to model a way in which the sciences could be constructively incorporated into a Christian worldview, I published a book (The Fourth Day, Eerdmans, 1986) that embodied what I had been teaching. I knew, of course, that some members of the Calvin College constituency might object to my friendly
attitude toward the word ‘evolution’ and to my judgment that Calvinist theology left more than enough room for it. Very naively, however, I thought that these objections would be expressed politely as carefully-crafted intellectual arguments that I could fruitfully engage in the familiar style of the academy.
I was dead wrong.
Most objections came not from the head, but from the gut. Objectors were angry and frightened. Calvin’s Board of Trustees, mostly clergy at that time, received many requests that my beliefs be examined to see whether or not I was being faithful to the centuries-old creeds that defined Calvinism.
Précis: Born into a Calvinist family, shaped by a Calvinist catechism training, educated in the Calvinist private school system, and nurtured by a community that prized its Calvinist systematic theology, I was a Calvinist through and through. For 31 years my teaching career was deeply rooted in the Calvinism I had inherited from my community.
During most of that time it was a fruitful and satisfying experience. Nonetheless, stimulated in part by the manner in which some members of that community responded to my efforts to practice what I had learned from my best teachers, I eventually felt the need to extend my intellectual exploration into philosophical territories far outside the one provided by Calvinism. Did I complete the lengthy journey from Calvinism to Freethought? The listener will be the judge.
...In the early 1970’s I began teaching an astronomy course for students majoring in anything but the natural sciences. Stellar evolution — the developmental history of stars from their formation to their exhaustion
of energetic resources — was one of my favorite topics. I defined the word “evolution” carefully, but never avoided it. Open class discussion on evolutionary processes was always fruitful. I saw no problem with this candor, and my students offered no objections. Neither did the college administration.
Encouraged by these positive experiences, and eager to model a way in which the sciences could be constructively incorporated into a Christian worldview, I published a book (The Fourth Day, Eerdmans, 1986) that embodied what I had been teaching. I knew, of course, that some members of the Calvin College constituency might object to my friendly
attitude toward the word ‘evolution’ and to my judgment that Calvinist theology left more than enough room for it. Very naively, however, I thought that these objections would be expressed politely as carefully-crafted intellectual arguments that I could fruitfully engage in the familiar style of the academy.
I was dead wrong.
Most objections came not from the head, but from the gut. Objectors were angry and frightened. Calvin’s Board of Trustees, mostly clergy at that time, received many requests that my beliefs be examined to see whether or not I was being faithful to the centuries-old creeds that defined Calvinism.