2001
The Voice: Fall 2001
Festscrift for John Vander Stelt is published
Marginal Resistance, a new book celebrating the contributions of Dr. John C. Vander
Stelt to the cause of Christian higher education and honoring his thirty years
of teaching at Dordt College was published this fall. The festscrift was presented
to Vander Stelt at convocation on August 30.The festscrift, a book of essays by former students and colleagues, was announced two years ago at Vander Stelt’s retirement from teaching. The book was edited by Dr. John Kok, dean of the humanities and professor of philosophy and theology at Dordt, who chose the title to reflect “a non-triumphalistic engagement of the antithesis” that he believes characterizes Vander Stelt’s contribution to Christian scholarship.
Possible contributors were sent a copy of remarks Vander Stelt made at a retirement dinner on six dangers and seven challenges that he foresees for Dordt College. They were asked to reflect in some way on one of those dangers or challenges. Eighteen essays were selected by a team of Kok, Dr. J.B. Hulst, Dr. Wayne Kobes, and Dr. Sydney Hielema.
“For all the differences in topic, discipline, and field of expertise, the unorchestrated coherence of vision that pervades all of these essays is truly amazing,” writes Kok in his preface. He adds, “The extent to which the book is of one piece is rooted, I believe, in the persuasion… that the whole of a person’s life is to be lived coram deo—as in the divine presence—what Abraham Kuyper described as the fundamental thought of Calvinism.”
Marginal Resistance is available from Dordt College Press, 498 4th Ave NE, Sioux Center, Iowa, 51250 (ISBN 0-932914-48-9) for $21.95.
