Lectures
ARIHE Lectureship
The Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education (ARIHE) has established a lectureship on Reformed Christian Higher Education. Lecturers selected from member institutions will be available for a two-year period.
The lecturers are selected by the ARIHE Executive Committee from the nominations made by the President's and Chief Academic Officers of member institutions. The lecturers are established scholars whose work is a model of the type of scholarship that is distinctive at these colleges. They will also be prepared to address issues that are extant on the member campuses.
Purpose
The purpose of the lectureship is to:
1. Provide models of scholarship that reflect the mission and character of Reformed Christian institutions.
2. Present theological and philosophical foundations of Christian higher education.
3. Shape a community of Reformed Christian higher education and scholarship.
The Lectures are intended to support faculty development efforts on the ARIHE campuses.
ARIHE Lectureship 2010-2012
1. Dr. Donald Sinnema
Heaven: Is it Part of Creation
Time and Eternity: Will Believers Enter Eternity?
1020 Old Mill Grove Rd.
Lake Zurich, IL 60047 USA
847-726-8936 (H); 708-239-4753 (W)
Don.Sinnema@trnty.edu2. Dr. Keith Charles Sewell
The Surprise, Triumph and Tragedy of Christianity
The Emergence of Evangelicalism
The Consequences of Evangelicalism
Dordt College
498 Fourth Avenue NE
Sioux Centre, IA 51250-1606 USA
712-722-6295 (W)
kcsewell@dordt.edu3. Dr. Peter J. Leithart
Constantine and the City of Sacrifice
The Quadriga: a Biblical and Pastoral Defense
City of In-Gratia: The Politics of Ingratitude in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
Extrinicism and Incarnation: Nature and Grace in Athanasius
Peniel Hall
3961 Darby Road
Moscow, Idaho 83843 USA
208-892-0410
Leihart@aol.com
Dr. Donald Sinnema, Professor of Theology, Trinity Christian College
BIO:
Dr. Sinnema is an internationally recognized scholar on the Canons of Dort. His understanding of and support for Reformed Christian higher education permeates his scholarship, being visible via his approach, topic selection, and analysis of material. In addition to his 22 years at Trinity Christian College, Dr. Sinnema has degrees from Dordt College and the Institute for Christian Studies. He is an outstanding example of the careful scholarship and theological commitments that represent the goals of ARIHE. Dr. Sinnema’s years of experience in higher education, coupled with his knowledge of Reformed Christian scholarship, is one that is worthy of sharing with other institutions.LECTURE TOPICS:
Lectures will focus on two topics related to misconceptions in popular eschatology: Heaven: Is it Part of Creation? This lecture will challenge the popular Christian conception that heaven is an eternal spiritual or celestial realm that is outside of creation, a realm that includes God, angels, and the souls of deceased believers. Based on a careful study of the biblical concept of heaven, this lecture will develop the following conclusions:1. Heaven is part of God’s temporal creation (Gen. 1:1).
2. There is no biblical basis for the popular distinction between heaven (singular) and the heavens (plural), as if heaven is God’s throne and the heavens are the created realm of the skies (lower atmosphere, space, and stars). The Hebrew term shamayim is almost exclusively in the plural (plural of extension) in the OT, and the Greek terms ouranos (sing.) and ouranoi (plur.) are interchangeable in the NT.
3. Heaven(s), since it is created, has a history. The present heaven(s) is part of the fallen creation and will be renewed in the new heaven(s).
4. Heaven(s), as the place where the spirits of believers are with the Lord, is temporary, since the final destiny of believers is the new heaven(s) and new earth.
5. When God is said to dwell or have his throne in the heaven(s), such association of God with this part of creation emphasizes: (a) God’s sovereign rule over the rest of creation; and (b) God taking a lofty distance from sinful humanity on earth. At other times, God is pictured as so transcendent that even the heavens and highest heavens cannot contain him (1 Kings 8:27, 30).Time and Eternity: Will Believers Enter Eternity?
This lecture challenges the popular Christian view of time and eternity, that time extends from creation to the last judgment (the “end of time”) and that eternity in some way surrounds time since it was there “before” time, extends “over” time, and will continue “after” the end of time. Hence, when believers die they leave this world and time and “enter eternity,” where they will enjoy “eternal” life, with no sense of past, present, or future. One variation of this view is that at death believers face the last judgment immediately as well as immediate resurrection. This lecture will develop the following conclusions, based on an understanding of the biblical view of time and eternity:
1. Creatureliness is marked by the modes of time and space. Like the present creation, the new creation will continue to be fully temporal.
2. Time is characterized by a progression of moments from past to present to future.
3. Time was created in the beginning and will continue from this age into the age to come, where it will go on forever.
4. Eternity means timelessness, an ever-present mode of existence without beginning or end.
5. Only God is eternal (it is one of his unique attributes); creatures are not and never will be eternal.
6. Yet God reveals himself in history, within time; hence in the Bible he is often described in creaturely temporal terms (anthropomorphic language).
7. The Greek term aionios (often translated “eternal”) has two basic meanings: (a) eternal, in the sense of timelessness, transcending time, and (b) everlasting, lasting forever, endless, time without end.
8. “Eternal (aionios) life” should be understood as everlasting life, temporal life without end. Everlasting life does not make the believer eternal or take the believer out of time. As temporal creatures believers begin to experience everlasting life here and now at conversion, and this will continue forever.
9. At death believers remain temporal creatures and do not become eternal or divine; then they await the resurrection, the last judgment, and will live everlasting life forever in the new creation.
Dr. Keith Charles Sewell, Professor of History, Dordt College
BIO:
Dr. Sewell’s principal scholarly interests include: the history of reformed Christianity; the history of evangelicalism from a reformational perspective; the history of English historiography with particular reference to the seventeenth century, and British diplomatic and imperial history in the later-nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries with special reference to the origins of the First World War. He is engaged in a number of research projects across these areas, his immediate priority being the completion of a study provisionally entitled: Contemporary Evangelicalism and the Challenge of Reformational Christianity. In Australia, Keith taught at Deakin University and Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne. Now at Dordt College, he teaches principally early modern and modern history, with a strong emphasis on Europe, including courses on the history of Calvinism and the history of historiography. He has given papers in Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United States, and gave the West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies “Summer Lectures” for 2009 in England.In addition to his published doctoral dissertation, Herbert Butterfield and the Interpretation of History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Keith has published various full-length articles, including: ‘The Concept of Technical History in the Thought of Herbert Butterfield.’ Fides et Historia. Volume 27, number 3 (Fall, 1995): 52-76; ‘Calvin and the Stars, Kuyper and the Fossils: Some Historiographical Reflections’. Pro Rege, Volume 32, number 1 (September 2003): 10-22, and reprinted in Celebrating the Vision: The Reformed Perspective of Dordt College, edited by John H. Kok. Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2004: 265-283; ‘The Herbert Butterfield Problem’. Journal of the History of Ideas. Volume 64, number 4 (October 2003).
LECTURE TOPICS:
Evangelicalism & the Challenge of Reformational Christianity: past trajectories & contemporary predicaments
Lecture One: The Surprise, Triumph and Tragedy of Christianity
As a prelude to discussing evangelicalism, this lecture considers the influence of Hellenic concepts on Christian self-understanding, and the beguiling allure of the notion of a “golden age.” The discussion then moves to the three great transitions through which Christianity passed before the reformation—(1) Hellenization with its absorption of pagan Greek concepts, (2) Romanization, with its fashioning of church-life into conformity with imperial expectations (Constantine, Theodosius), and (3) then Germanization in the west. These transitions are used to explain why the reformation of the 16th century exhibited divergent understandings of how the scriptures are authoritative for Christian faith and practice. Specifically: the Corrective—Lutherans, Anglicans, the Regulative—Zwingli and Bullinger at Zurich and the Puritans; the Exemplary—the Swiss and other Anabaptists, and the Directional—Calvin and the Genevans.Lecture Two: The Emergence of Evangelicalism
This lecture opens by discussing the question: “Whatever happened to the reformation?” and provides an answer with reference to the subtle interactions of (usually Aristotelian) scholastic theology and introspective pietism. Post reformation pietism is seen as a reaction to formalism and intellectualism, but yet lacking the intense activist-revivalism characteristic of classic evangelicalism. These added features are seen as being imparted through the influence of the Renewed Church of the Unitas Fratrum (Moravians) of the 1720s to 1740s. At this juncture, special attention is paid to how and why Count von Zinzendorf (1700-60) posited the primacy of a religion of the heart (Herzensreligion) over the head (Kopfwissenschaft) in a way that privileged the sensate and emotive to the disparagement of intellectual understanding. This tendency is seen as central to the development of Anglophone evangelicalism, with its pronounced disinclination to come to terms with the religious significance of all human culture and disinclination to reflect with systematic coherence on the complex ordering of creation.Lecture Three: The Consequences of Evangelicalism
The discussion opens with an appreciative yet critical discussion of David Bebbington’s description of evangelicalism. Attention is then given to why evangelicalism has increasingly exhibited both mancentered and other-worldly tendencies in terms of a strong inclination towards Wesleyan and post- Wesleyan forms of Arminianism, coupled with a marked orientation towards pre-millennial apocalyptic speculation. In this wider context, contemporary “reformed evangelicalism” (tracing its lineage from Edwards and Whitefield and also strongly influenced by “old Princeton”) is viewed as seeking to appropriate an earlier scholastic theology within the general limitations of evangelicalism. By contrast, the neo-Calvinism eventually emerging from the work of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)—with its directional view of biblical authority and positive regard for creation and culture—is viewed as exceeding the limitations of evangelicalism, and, more able to live and act constructively in our contemporary milieu, not least because it does not represent a static system, but is attuned to the greatest of all changes—the coming of the Kingdom.
Dr. Peter J. Leithart, Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature, New Saint
Andrews
BIO:
Dr. Leithart (Ph.D., Cambridge, 1998) has been a leading scholar-teacher at New Saint Andrews and in Reformed and wider Christian academic circles for more than 10 years. A prolific author (he has penned more than 20 books and 50 scholarly articles on theology, literature and culture), Dr. Leithart is also a gifted and popular speaker. He has been an invited speaker at academic and church-related conferences across North America and around the world, including Russia, Poland, China, and South Korea.His most recent works, particularly Rome Baptized (InterVarsity Press, forthcoming), Deep Exegesis (Baylor University Press, 2009), and Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Brazos Press, 2008), have received very positive reviews in academic and Christian circles and provide the foundation for his series of proposed lectures.
LECTURE TOPICS:
1. Constantine and the City of Sacrifice
“Constantinianism” has become nearly a curse in contemporary theology, but the dismissal of the first Christian emperor often rests on historical research that has long become outdated. By attending to the role of sacrifice in pagan Rome and in Christian practice and theology, this lecture will show that by supporting the church in a context of religious toleration, Constantine laid basic, and basically Christian, political and cultural foundations of the West.2. The Quadriga: A Biblical and Pastoral Defense
Protestants generally reject the "fourfold method" of biblical interpretation employed by patristic and especially medieval commentators. Yet, something like the quadriga is nearly unavoidable in preaching and teaching. Every preacher wants to communicate what happened (literal), how the text is related to Jesus (allegorical), what it teaches us to do (tropological), and what it teaches us to hope for (anagogical). This lecture is a biblical and pastoral defense of a "soft" quadrigal hermeneutics.3. City of In-Gratia: The Politics of Ingratitude in Shakespeare's Coriolanus
From Seneca to Elizabethan political theorists, gratitude and ingratitude were seen as central political concerns, but during the seventeenth century gratitude was privatized as a personal and domestic virtue. By examining Shakespeare's Coriolanus, this lecture examines the political dangers of ingratitude, and how the ingratitude of the Roman people and leaders serves as a foil to the City of God, the city of grace and gratitude.4. Extrinicism and Incarnation: Nature and Grace in Athanasius
The problem of nature and grace has been a perennial issue in Christian theology, particularly in the West, but has come especially to the forefront during the past century. This lecture explores Athanasius' doctrine of creation and incarnation to find resources to address issues in both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.
