Reading: Forward to the First Edition

Forward to the First Edition

Dr. Roy A. Clouser

This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy.

Despite the fact that the idea of those relations which is defended here is virtually unknown among professionals in these three areas, it is not historically new. It can trace its lineage through the thought of John Calvin and back to the Bible itself. However, it is an element of Calvin’s thought that has not been preserved by the Protestant tradition, and is based on biblical teaching that has received short shrift by the vast majority of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers. Nevertheless, after undergoing a renaissance led by the Dutch Calvinists Groen Van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper in the nineteenth century, this idea was given an impressive development in the work of the twentieth-century philosophers Dirk Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd.

It is the thought of Dooyeweerd in particular that is reflected here, and is introduced in a way that is intended especially for those not already acquainted with its Dutch Calvinist background.

I am grateful to a number of people who have read the manuscript in part or whole and who made valuable suggestions for its improvement. These include Johan Vander Hoeven (Free University of Amsterdam), James Ross (University of Pennsylvania), Grady Spires (Gordon College), Danie Strauss (University of the Orange Free State, Bloemfontein), Paul Helm (University of London), Hendrik Hart (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto), Rev. Richard Russell (St. Thomas a Becket Church, Bath), Jonathan Gold (West Liberty State College), Martin Rice (University of Pittsburgh), James W. Skillen (Association for Public Justice, Washington, D.C.), and Carole Roos, my editor at the University of Notre Dame Press.

Others were also of aid and comfort in their own special way: Dr. Charles Stephenson, Dale and Lorraine Fleming, the late Bea Shemeley, John and Audrey Van Dyk, Gil Hunter, Arnold Olt, and the late Peter Steen.

I also wish to express my thanks to several institutions for their support at various stages of the research and writing: to the University of Pennsylvania for a Harrison Fellowship, to the Free University of Amsterdam for two travel grants, and to the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies and the Andreas Foundation for writing grants.

But above all, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the two people whose help was of the greatest significance to this work. The first is the late Herman Dooyeweerd, who endured lengthy conferences with me at his home, two to three times a week, for a total of four months; the second is my dear wife, Anita, whose editing of the entire manuscript was invaluable. It is to them that this work is affectionately dedicated.