June 2009 - Dordt College

Pro Rege 

Volume XXXVII, Number 4 

June 2009 

Features 

Christian Voices in Musicology: 

A Report 

Karen De Mol 

What Will You Name It 

Dordt College Commencement Address, May 9, 2008 

Jeri Schelhaas 

Nakedness and Shame in Calvin’s Writings 

Alida Sewell 

A Free Christian University: 

Review Essay 

Keith Sewell 

A quarterly faculty publication of 

Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa 

Book Reviews 

John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick: 

Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection 

Reviewed by Jessica Clevering 

David Brown: 

God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary 

Reviewed by Alida Sewell 

John Wolffe: 

The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, 

Chalmers and Finney 

Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell 

Stephen H. Webb: 

The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound 

Reviewed by Teresa TerHaar

Pro Rege 

Pro Rege is a quarterly publication of the faculty of Dordt College. As its name 

indicates (a Latin phrase meaning “for the King”), the purpose of this journal is to 

proclaim Christ’s kingship over the sphere of education and scholarship. By exploring 

topics relevant to Reformed Christian education, it seeks to inform the Christian 

community regarding Dordt’s continuing response to its educational task. 

Editorial Board 

Mary Dengler, Editor 

Sherri B. Lantinga, Review Editor 

Sally Jongsma, Proofs Editor 

Pro Rege is made available free of charge as a service to the Christian community. 

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Editor, Pro Rege 

Dordt College 

Sioux Center, Iowa 51250 

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The index for Pro Rege, now in its thirty–seventh year of publication, can be 

accessed via the Internet: http://www.dordt.edu/publications/pro_rege/ 

The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent an 

official position of Dordt College. 

ISSN 0276-4830 

Copyright, June 2009 

Pro Rege, Dordt College

Editor’s Note: This report was presented at a Dordt College Faculty Forum, April 23, 2009, in preparation 

for a summer seminar at Calvin College. 

Christian Voices in 

Musicology: 

A Report 

By Karen De Mol 

For many musicians and music lovers—maybe 

for you, and most of the time for me—music is an 

aesthetic thing. The concerts we give in the B. J. 

Haan Auditorium are intended to be significant 

aesthetic occasions, presenting music for which all 

sorts of musical, aesthetic adjectives would be appropriate: 

expressive, harmonious, beautiful, melodious, 

rich, lovely. When we think about all the 

areas that make up our creaturely life—economic, 

social, political, physical, and others—we musicians 

tend to hone in on the aesthetics mode and 

consider it our home territory. That focus reminds 

Dr. Karen De Mol is Professor of Music and Chair 

of the Music Department at Dordt College. 

me of a panel discussion I once heard in which 

the panelists were describing why they entered the 

field of music. One panelist held forth at some 

length about his attraction to the structure, the 

order, the philosophy, the meaning of music. Another 

panelist looked at him in sheer astonishment; 

he said, “Is that really why you went into music 

I went into music because it sounds so good.” I 

think most Dordt music majors would agree with 

the second panelist. None of those panelists, and 

none of our students that I know of, are entering 

music because of its connection with justice. 

Historically, that second view has been in sync 

with the field of musicology, until recently. Musicology 

is, broadly speaking, the scholarly study 

of music, as contrasted with composition, the 

creative side of music, and performance, the recreative 

side. Musicology came into its own as 

an academic discipline in the nineteenth century. 

It responded to the then “hero worship” of composers 

(today the hero worship is of performers) 

by seeking to shift discourse about music toward 

a concentration on the music itself. 1 Traditionally, 

musicology has focused on the music, not 

on the social and cultural contexts or the roles of 

music in individual and collective lives. Traditionally, 

musicologists have analyzed musical masterpieces, 

prepared transcriptions and performance 

scores, studied the performance practice of past 

eras, studied compositions in light of the instrumental 

capabilities of the time, and the like. A 

local example of how we are affected by the work 

of historical musicologists is this: this spring the 

Sioux County Oratorio Chorus performed Handel’s 

Messiah. Half a century ago the orchestra for 

Pro Rege—June 2009 1

that performance would have been very large and 

inclusive of some instruments that Handel did not 

use. The research of historical musicology into the 

orchestras of Handel’s time has led to a restoration 

of the original orchestration—and that was 

reflected in the SCOC’s recent performance. 

But in the last while, perhaps the past thirty 

years, a trend called “the new musicology” has 

emerged. The new musicologists appreciate the 

“embeddedness” of music in culture and have 

expanded musicological discourse to include 

more focus on sociological and cultural-historical 

questions. All sorts of new fields of musicological 

study have sprung up. Ethnomusicology is one; 

ethnomusicology studies the music of cultures 

different from our own. This new field is important 

to Wycliffe Bible Translators, which engages 

ethnomusicologists so that the music accompanying 

the Gospel to new cultures is accessible to and 

appropriate for that culture. Ethnomusicology is 

becoming a common course on college campuses; 

Dordt has one too—it’s called “Music in Non- 

Western Cultures.” (Two important goals of 

our Dordt course are understanding the music 

itself in musical terms and understanding the 

relationship of the musics of these cultures to their 

cultural contexts—religion, family, work, leisure, 

education, social protest, entertainment, etc.) 

Other new fields include music and gender, 

music and feminism, music and psychology. Not 

all musicologists agree; scholarly journals, conference 

discussions, and e-mail discussion lists all 

witness sharp dissensions between the historical 

musicologists, who believe strongly that the proper 

study of music is music, and the new musicologists, 

who believe equally strongly that music must 

be studied in relationship with other areas of human 

life and thinking. 

An interesting thing that has emerged in this 

tension is common acceptance that all scholars 

start with a point of view. Accordingly, all manner 

of voices are acceptable: feminist voices, Marxist 

voices, gay/lesbian voices—all are being accepted 

as legitimate voices, even if one does not agree 

with them. So, why not a Christian voice We 

think that the climate in this field is uniquely ripe 

now for the entry of Christian voices. 

Seeking to seize the moment, a group of six 

Christian musicologists and theorists from five 

different schools recently banded together to develop 

a Christian voice in the field of musicology, 

a voice which, we hope, will command a hearing 

in the field of musicology at large. It is my great 

privilege to be one of the six. My colleagues in this 

endeavor are Drs. Timothy Steele and Benita Walters 

Fredlund, of Calvin College; Dr. Johann Buis, 

of Wheaton College; Dr. Brooks Kuykendall, of 

Erskine College; and Dr. Stanley Pelke, of Western 

Michigan University. My intent in this brief essay 

is to describe our work so far and to encourage 

others to provide us with insights and examples for 

our continuing research. In describing our work, I 

will at times be using the words of our grant applications; 

for those words, I am grateful for the work 

of the colleagues just named earlier, who crafted 

the proposals and shepherded them through application 

processes. 

Our work will focus on crisis, justice, and 

music—rather a far cry from the consideration of 

music as focused on a pleasurable aesthetic experience. 

Recent years have brought a new interest 

in musicological writing on music and crisis, or 

the relationship of music to conflict, war, injustice, 

oppression, abuse, and trauma. This interest is related 

to the new musicological interest in music 

in relation to specific cultural contexts. But the 

ramp-up of this interest can also be traced, in some 

part, to the terrorist attack on the United States 

on September 11, 2001. Since then, significant 

articles and books have been written, and conferences 

have been held on music and crisis; several 

universities have even offered courses on music 

and crisis or music and war (Columbia University 

and Harvard University, to name two). 

A particularly galvanizing study has been that 

of Suzanne Cusick, of New York University. She 

studied the U.S. military’s use of music in war and 

in interrogation. Her paper, titled Music as Torture/ 

Music as Weapon, exposed and sharply criticized 

the use of music as torture in the American War on 

Terror. For fifty years, she states, the government 

has used music as an acoustical, physical torture 

as part of its “No Touch Torture,” which leaves no 

marks on the flesh, all the while the musicology 

profession was believing music to be a non-political 

art. Most recently, detainees in Bagdad were 

forced without respite to listen to certain pieces of 

American music, offensive to their values, which 

wracked their psyches, and at deafening volumes, 

which damaged their hearing. Cusick believes 

2 Pro Rege—June 2009

that there have been moments at which government 

actions on torture impress themselves on national 

consciousness; certainly this is one of them. 

Torture has become thinkable, even mandatory— 

and thus a threshold has been crossed, a threshold 

which previously was assumed unthinkable to cross 

without severe damage to our humanity. Cuscick’s 

presentation at the American Musicological Society 

convention in 2006 was given a standing ovation 

by a packed room. Subsequently, the AMS 

board took the step, unusual for a scholarly association, 

of going on record to publicly condemn the 

use of music in physical or psychological torture, 

calling this practice a “misappropriation of music” 

and a “contamination of our cultures.” 2 By calling 

the use of music as a weapon a “misappropriation,” 

the AMS implies that music has some other, true, 

In the context of the ongoing 

discussion of music 

and torture begun at the 

AMS, we six hope to 

speak to this question: in 

God’s world, what is the 

appropriate use of music 

How does music express 

our humanity, and what 

musical practices diminish 

it 

essential nature, but does not spell out what this 

nature is. 

What would a Christian response to this question 

be In the context of the on-going discussion 

of music and torture begun at the AMS, we six 

hope to speak to this question: in God’s world, 

what is the appropriate use of music How does 

music express our humanity, and what musical 

practices diminish it 

These recent events—9/11 and the revelation 

of the use of music as an instrument of torture— 

have brought such themes and questions into 

the forefront of public consciousness; but the 

relationship of music to war, politics, oppression, 

and personal tragedy stretches back to ancient 

times. The Bible recounts that while the Israelites 

were in Babylonian captivity, they did not feel able 

to sing songs of their homeland, but their captors 

nevertheless “demanded a song” from them, 3 and 

in The History of the Peloponnesian War, 4 Thucydides 

describes the use of flute players to regulate soldiers’ 

steps, as did fife and drum corps in the American 

Revolution. Instances in later centuries include 

Medieval and Renaissance composers writing 

elaborate music to commemorate the dead, and 

Dutch farmers and French Huguenot explorers 

bringing Protestant psalmody to the New World 

after suffering persecution and political expulsion, 

to name only a few. 

Tumultuous geopolitical conflict in the 

twentieth century and a shrinking global village 

have made us aware of similar interrelationships 

of music and politics across the globe in relatively 

recent times. Such instances include the promotion 

of proletarian, or “people’s,” music (in various 

guises) by labor and revolutionary movements 

in Europe, North and South America, and Asia; 

the exploitation and control of music in Nazi 

Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China; the 

important role music played in anti-war and civil 

rights movements in America; the importance 

of a variety of indigenous musical styles in postcolonial 

struggles in Africa; and many more. 5 

Given all those instances from Babylon to 

the present, to which of these, and to what other 

situations of crisis and justice or injustice, might 

we Christian musicologists speak Our vision for 

this project is to prepare and to collect several case 

studies of instances in which musical activity has 

played a special role in a time of crisis. Our aim 

is that these case studies cover a wide variety of 

eras, places, and genres. In our brainstorming we 

imagined that some of these studies might include, 

for example, music sung by Yiddish folk choirs 

to commemorate the Holocaust, music used in 

the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, 

music composed by Ludwig Senfl for the Diet of 

Worms, the use of classical music in the Cultural 

Revolution in China, the reception of Samuel 

Barber’s Adagio for Strings in post-9/11 memorials, 


and music in personal times of grief. Each study 

would seek to understand the dynamics of musicmaking 

in that specific crisis context and offer a 

Christian reading of the ethical and philosophical 

implications of those dynamics. Our hope is that 

our scholarship will offer insights into how music 

and crisis interact, and that we might use what we 

learn to call for music’s place in bringing justice 

and shalom to God’s world. 6 

Each of us is now focusing on a topic on which 

we have already done research or had personal experience 

or which is close to our heart. In addition, 

we hope that other scholars will be drawn 

into the project once it is under way. Dr. Johann 

Buis will focus on music and apartheid; he brings 

personal experience of life in South Africa and a 

body of published work to the task. Dr. Timothy 

Steele intends to study Psalm-singing in Hungary 

during the long Communist oppression, particularly 

its role in keeping and shaping faith identity 

of Reformed Christians. Drs. Brooks Kuykendall 

and Stanley Pelke, whose special interest is early 

twentieth- century music, are considering a study 

of pieces composed by English composers who had 

lived through both world wars—Benjamin Britten’s 

War Requiem and Michael Tippet’s A Child 

of Our Time, both pieces directly related to those 

wars—and possibly comparing the responses of 

these composers to protracted and reoccurring war 

to that of a composer responding to a terrible but 

single event, John Adams’ On the Transmigration of 

Souls, composed after 9/11. 

Dr. Benita Walters Fredlund’s unique area is 

the role of music in the Holocaust. She focuses on 

the music among Holocaust survivors, particularly 

in the Toronto area, music which serves to help 

shape their identity as Jews and as Holocaust survivors, 

music which serves to keep the memory of 

the Holocaust alive, music which expresses their 

continuing grief. Fredlund has already published 

on this topic and has given conference presentations, 

including one at the Lilly Fellows Conference 

at Seattle Pacific University last fall. Another 

area of study might be the role of appreciation of 

music among the Nazis, who desired and enjoyed 

a highly cultivated musical life even as they systematically 

destroyed a people; how did their music 

shape their identify—at least, their perception 

of their own identity 

Then there was music within the death camps. 

I just finished reading Music of Another World, 7 

written by Szymon Laks, a Polish Jew who was a 

prisoner in the Birkenau concentration camp for 

two and a half years. As prisoners’ musical abilities 

became known, and often at the request of some 

guard or other, they received special permission to 

be excused from hard labor to play in the camp 

orchestra. At length, Laks became the director of 

and arranger for the orchestra, which was assigned 

to play marches for the daily walk of inmates to 

their place of labor and for various events and 

whims of the guards. His intent is to describe the 

music in the camp, but he cannot do so without 

describing the context of that music. He writes of 

the terrible contradiction, “that music—that most 

sublime expression of the human spirit—also became 

entangled in the hellish enterprise of the extermination 

of millions of people and even took an 

active part in this extermination.” 8 His account of 

music in the camp throws light on the “meaning” 

of music in those camps, both for prisoners and 

their guards. In an appendix are some Polonaises 

he wrote in the camp. Laks’ account is both horrifying 

and fascinating. 

I have recently become aware of Lan Adomian, 

a Mexican composer with Russian Jewish origins, 

who has been called the Holocaust composer. 

Adomian wrote his Fifth Symphony (“The Martyrs 

Wood”) in memory of the six million Jewish 

victims of the holocaust, and Terezin’s Ballad, in 

memory of the 15,000 children murdered in the 

Teresienstadt camp. He also won an international 

competition, “Holocaust and Renaissance,” in the 

University of Haifa, Israel, in 1978. 

How did I learn of him One day I was 

surprised by a visit from Rev. Israel Ramirez. He 

had read my little book Sound Stewardship 9 and 

wondered if I was writing anything else. When 

I described this project, he made me acquainted 

with Lan Adomian—and also sent me the score of 

a choral work he wrote using texts on peace from 

the Bible. I am hoping that others can suggest 

additional resources for the study of music and the 

Holocaust or any of our other topics. 

That music means more in times of crisis is 

true, not only in times of national and societal 

crisis but also in times of personal crisis. Music 

has been used to mourn, memorialize, and heal 

in the context of personal tragedies. For example, 

alternative rock artist Tori Amos recounts her will 


to survive, despite being violently raped, in the 

song “Me and a Gun”; and New York composer 

John Corigliano composed his Symphony No. 1 as 

a eulogy for victims of AIDS—victims named in 

his accompanying text. 

Personal crisis can be the death of loved ones. 

Every grieving family selects songs for the funeral, 

however small and private that service. Music can 

powerfully express the grief that otherwise would 

burst our skin. I remember that on the afternoon 

I learned of the sudden death of a close friend, I 

played the recording of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem 

three times in a row, very loud, to express my 

outrage at our mortality and to be steadied by texts 

of faith. Thomas A. Dorsey wrote the gospel hymn 

“Take My Hand, Precious Lord” in the aftermath 

of the death of his wife and infant son. To prepare 

himself for his own death, Heinrich Schutz composed 

music for his own funeral. In his Lutheran 

tradition, the choral cantata is to be an explication 

of the sermon, a “second sermon,” as it were; before 

Schutz could write music for his own funeral, 

he needed to obtain his pastor’s sermon for his 

own funeral. Funeral music has been composed 

specifically to assist in national mourning for a 

public figure, such as the occasion for the composition 

of Verdi’s Requiem. It has served to mourn 

the loss of one’s own children. Herbert Howells, 

agnostic English composer, wrote Hymnus Paradsi 

after three years of grieving for his nine-year-old 

son, who died of spinal meningitis; and Nicholas 

Wolterstorff, deeply Christian, commissioned a 

requiem by Cary Ratcliff for the funeral of his son. 

How do these pieces express grief and fear, anger 

and despair, peace and hope for the individual and 

for the community—both the local community at 

the time and the human community over time 

How do these pieces express identity, and how do 

they express one’s beliefs about death With my 

strong interest in both liturgy and music literature, 

this is the field I hope to explore. Some requiems 

have become standard concert repertoire, while 

others have not. What happens to the meaning of 

liturgical pieces when they are put on the concert 

stage And can it be identified why some requiems 

speak to a large audience over time while others 

remain personal and local 

What all these instances show is that in times 

of war, oppression, and trauma, music takes on 

heightened symbolic and personal importance and 

is used to express identity and worldview in ways 

that are more obvious than during times of peace, 

freedom, and contentment. 

That meaning may fluctuate over time. In 

traditional musicology, meaning is inherent in 

the piece and is fixed, excluding what the piece 

“means” to the listener. But over time its “meaning” 

to listeners may vary with the context. An 

example is Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, 

which was written originally to celebrate the quelling 

of the Scottish uprising by the British in 1746; 

in the 1930s, it was used by the Nazis as an example 

of Teutonic military superiority; later still, 

What all these instances 

show is that in times of 

war, oppression, and 

trauma, music takes 

on heightened symbolic 

and personal importance 

and is used to express 

identity and worldview 

in ways that are more 

obvious than during 

times of peace, freedom, 

and contentment. 

it was understood as a story of the triumph of Jews 

over their oppressors by Yiddish folk choirs in 

America during the Holocaust. 10 In a similar manner, 

one assumes that Barney songs (sung by characters 

from the children’s television show “Barney 

and Friends”) had a radically different meaning for 

toddlers in America than for detainees at Camp 

Nama, Bagdad, who were forced to listen to them 

at deafening volumes as one technique of many in 

the American military’s “harsh interrogation” protocol. 

11 After 9/11, a piece that almost became the 

theme song of the nation at that time was Samuel 

Barber’s Adagio for Strings. What is there about 


this music that gave it meaning for a nation at that 

time 

What is our hoped-for outcome In general, 

we hope to develop a Christian voice in the field 

of musicology on topics related to music and crisis, 

music and justice. I should be saying “Christian 

voices,” for we envision no single Christian 

response to these issues—though certainly a main 

note in all Christian voices is that Christians care 

deeply about justice because of the character and 

the command of our God. In regard to the variety 

of topics, specific voices will develop specific nuances 

of Christian thought. We aim to amplify the 

voices of Christian music scholars, whose thinking 

about music and whose professional engagement 

with musicology cannot help being shaped 

by their identity as Christians. 

I now return to the question posed at the 

beginning of this paper. By calling the use of music 

as a weapon a “misappropriation,” the AMS implies 

that music has some other true, essential nature, 

but it does not spell out what this nature is. What 

would a Christian response to this question be 

What do we believe about how God created music 

and its appropriate use in God’s world Similarly, 

what Christian response might we make to the use 

of music as a tool for propaganda or the control of 

musical composition and performance by those in 

power When, if ever, are such practices justified, 

and why What might a Christian response be to 

the seeming mutability of musical meaning evident 

in the times of crisis How is it that music can hold 

meaning and significance for a given community, 

and is that meaning entirely relative What in 

the design and structure of the music itself (that 

traditional focus of historical musicology) is fixed, 

and what is multi-valent, lending itself to multiple 

meanings 

For Christian scholars and “new” musicologists 

alike, moments of music and crisis are seen as 

especially fruitful and instructive areas to study. 

They are so because they clearly demonstrate that 

musical activity is not isolated but embedded in the 

fabric of human life. For Christian musicologists, 

these contexts allow us to argue further for the 

ethical and moral aspects of music-making and 

to include Christian and biblical perspectives 

among the many different voices analyzing music’s 

ontology, semiotics, and role in our culture. This 

is an exciting and a challenging project. I will be 

grateful for any suggestions, insights, examples, 

and questions to raise as we go along. 

Endnotes 

1. Manfred Bukofzer’s view of the field’s origins in Ruth 

A. Solie, “Sophie Drinker’s History,” in Disciplining 

Music: Musicology and Its Canons, edited by Katherine 

Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press, 1992), 28. 

2. http://www.ams-net.org/AMS-torture-resolution.pdf. 

3. Psalm 137: 3 (New Living Translation). 

4. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. 

Richard Crawley (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publications, 

2000). 

5. Timothy Steele, Benita Wolters-Fredlund, et. al. Draft 

proposal to Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities, 

2008. 

6. Timothy Steele, Benita Wolters-Fredlund, et. al. Draft 

proposal to Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities, 

2008. 

7. Syzmon Laks, Musique d’un autre monde (Music of 

Another World), trans. Chester A. Kisiel ( Evanston, 

Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1989). 

8. Ibid., 5. 

9. Karen A. DeMol, Sound Stewardship (Sioux Center, 

Iowa: Dordt Press, 1999). 

10. Benita Wolters-Fredlund, “Judas Maccabaeus as Revolutionary 

Jewish Hero: Progressive Jewish Readings of 

Handel’s Oratorio during the Holocaust,” under review. 

11. Suzanne Cusick, “‘You are in a place that is out of the 

world . . .’: Music in the Detention Camps of the 

‘Global War on Terror’” in the Journal of the Society for 

American Music 2.1 (February 2008). 


What Will You Name it 

Dordt College Commencement 

Address, May 9, 2008 

by Jeri Schelhaas 

Dear graduates of Dordt College, 2008, and 

your family, friends, professors, staff, administrators, 

and members of the board of trustees of this college 

who have worked for these graduates these past four 

years, or in some cases two, or maybe six, it is my 

privilege to speak to you this morning. 

In the spring of 2008, Jeri Schelhaas retired from 

20 years on the Dordt faculty. Her years at Dordt 

included teaching in the English, Theatre Arts, 

and Communication departments and directing 

main stage theater productions. She and husband, 

David, also a Dordt emiritus professor, are spending 

their first retirement years, as she says, “figuring 

out how to retire.” 

Forty-one years ago I graduated from Dordt 

College. At my commencement ceremony a very 

important man said something very significant. I 

don’t remember his name, and I don’t remember a 

thing he said. I’m well aware that 40, 15, five years, 

one year from now, the same thing will happen 

to you. But for the moment, I have the honor of 

speaking to you one more time. 

You know, the next time we hear from many 

of you, it will be when you write to Sally Jongsma 

at the Dordt College Voice to announce the birth of 

a child, and you will tell us the child’s name. Let 

me forewarn you that naming a child is a real task. 

Finding a name that sounds good, fits the child, 

and means something is difficult to do. Our two 

daughters’ names mean “white wave” and “bitter.” 

We didn’t do so well there. Our daughter Rebecca 

and her husband Laremy De Vries are expecting a 

daughter in June. Right now we are all calling her 

“Junebug” but trust that her parents find something 

more fitting when she makes her appearance AND 

that we can pronounce it without too many lessons 

in Dutch pronunciation. 

Naming anything is a real task, one given to us 

by the Creator. A lot of your education at Dordt has 

been learning what to name things: 

Gnosticism, scholasticism, neo-platonism, 

pragmatism, existentialism 

Adenosine triphosphate, deoxyribo--nucleic acid 

Maceronic text, hocket, hemiola, klangfarbermelodie 

Elliptic curves, modular forms 

Respiration, phonation, resonance, articulation 

Transcription, translation, and signal 

transduction 


Periaktoi, ellipsoidal, chiaroscuro 

Red herring, slippery slope and straw man 

Synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, hegemony 

Pistic, trophic, kinematic 

And that’s not even that group of distinctive 

words that many of you claim you are tired of: 

Dordt words, Dordt talk, Dordt speak, words that 

some of you told me not to use in this speech today. 

But I must say that an institution that doesn’t have 

a language interwoven into its course material is not 

worth your money. If we talked here the same way 

the world talks, you could have just as well spent 

your money somewhere else. “Religious orientation, 

creational structure, creational development and 

contemporary response” are important words to help 

you take your place in God’s world. 

It’s hard to talk about something unless we 

know what to name it. It’s hard to even think about 

something unless we know its real name. You know 

the story of Helen Keller, who was unable to speak, 

hear, or see, after a childhood sickness. But the world 

was opened to her when she came to understand 

what’s in a word, in a name. In this scene I want 

to read to you, Annie Sullivan, her teacher, pleads 

with Helen’s father to let her have more time to teach 

Helen that everything has a name. This scene is from 

the play The Miracle Worker: 

“Captain Keller, she has to learn that everything 

has its name; that words can be her eyes, to 

everything in the world outside her and inside 

too. What is she without words With them she 

can think, have ideas, be reached. There’s not a 

thought or fact in the world that can’t be hers. She 

has eighteen nouns and three verbs in her fingers 

now. I need only time to push one of them into 

her mind. One, and everything under the sun 

will follow. Oh Helen, reach! I wanted to teach 

you—everything the earth is full of, everything 

on it that’s ours for a wink and it’s gone, and what 

we are on it, the light we bring to it and leave 

behind in words; why, you can see five thousand 

years back in a light of words, everything we feel, 

think, know—and share, in words, so not a soul is 

in darkness, or done with, even in the grave. And 

I know, I know, one word and I can put the world 

into your hand.” 

The rest of the story, you may know, is that Annie 

Sullivan does succeed in getting into Helen’s head the 

awareness that the water she felt coming out of the 

pump was represented by the combination of letters 

pounded into her hand. And once she got that, 

Helen Keller went on to learn much, to graduate from 

Radcliff, to write books which included thoughts 

that inspire and instruct yet today. Graduates, we 

also wanted to teach you how to name things so that 

knowledge of the world, God’s world, was put into 

your hands to better work in His Kingdom. 

Another thing about naming is that when you 

name something, you bring it into significance. You 

know how worthy you feel when someone calls you 

by your name. But the greatest significance we can 

have is that given us by the God, who calls each of His 

creatures by name. Listen to some of these verses: 

“Look at the night sky,” says the Holy One. “Who 

do you think made all this Who marches this 

army of stars out each night, counts them off, 

calls them by name, so magnificent, so powerful, 

and never overlooks a single one” (Is. 40.26). 

It’s not just the stars. It’s his human creation as well. 

Is. 49:16 says “Look, I’ve written your names on the 

palm of my hand.” And in Rev. 2:17, “To everyone 

who conquers I will give . . . a white stone, and on 

the white stone is written a new name that no one 

knows except the one who receives it.” God has a 

name that captures you more than you even know 

yourself. 

He names us into significance, and he calls us to 

do the same. Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet of the late 

nineteenth century, wrote a set of ten long poems 

called The Duino Elegies, in which he poses the idea 

that humans are here to find the value of ordinary 

things and, as you see in this poem, to name them to 

show their value: 

Maybe we’re here only to say: house, 

Bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window— 

At most, pillar, tower . . . but to say them, 

remember, 

Oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves 

Never dreamed of existing so intensely. 

That’s what we wanted to teach you—that an object, 

a person, a place, a well thought-out idea becomes 

worth something when you call it by its right 

name. What is a right name It is the name that 

best corresponds to reality—God’s reality and not 

our own clouded view of reality. It is accurate and 

specific, and it tells the truth. 

Sometimes naming the right name is beautiful, 

and sometimes calling something by its right name 


draws attention to a truth which is anything but 

beautiful. Walter Wangerin—Lutheran pastor; author 

of novels, plays and short stories; and a campus guest 

of the Dordt English Department some years back— 

wrote a book some of you may have read in English 

200, The Book of the Dun Cow—a fable, allegory, 

fantasy, story about a rooster and the flock of 

chickens who live in his coop. It is a story that has an 

amazing resemblance to our world of creation, fall, 

That’s what we wanted 

to teach you—to be 

honest in your naming 

of the things that will 

be affected by what 

you do, by the choices 

you make, to not use 

dishonest words that 

hide responsibility or 

outcomes. 

redemption. The story concerns a time when the sun 

turned around the earth and animals could speak, 

when Chauntecleer the rooster ruled over a more or 

less peaceful kingdom of assorted animals. But what 

the animals did not know was that they were the 

keepers of Wyrm, a monster of evil, long imprisoned 

beneath the earth. As the story unfolds, Wyrm is 

breaking free, and his servant Cockatrice reveals 

himself as the archenemy of Chauntecleer’s peaceable 

kingdom. The time comes when Chauntecleer rouses 

his humble friends to battle Cockatrice and his snaky 

fellow fiends, the Basilicks. After the day’s vicious 

battle, the animals sprawl inside the camp exhausted, 

wounded, or dead. At night Chauntecleer walks 

outside the walls that surround the camp beyond 

the dead who have fallen there and contemplates the 

next day when he fights Cockatrice alone. Pertelote, 

his wife, sees him leave and goes to find him, for she 

knows that his pride will not let him give up what 

looks to be a losing battle. 

As Pertelote wanders in the dark outside the 

walls, she slithers and trips in the bloodied mud and 

falls down next to the open mouth of a fallen Deer. 

“The mouth was open as in a scream, but it screamed 

no sound at all. The deer was dead ….” As Pertelote 

plunged away from the sickening sight, Chauntecleer 

grabbed her. 

“Now,” he said. “You tell me what you’re doing 

out here.” 

For one moment the Hen was rigid. In the next 

she seized Chauntecleer and drove him with an 

incredible force back toward the Deer. Loneliness 

had split open in rage. 

“What’s his name” she demanded. 

“What” Chauntecleer was overwhelmed. “I don’t 

know,” he said. “I can’t see.” 

Pertelote pushed him closer. “Touch him. Feel 

his face. Tell me his name!” 

“But he’s dead.” 

“I don’t care. I want to know his name.” 

Chauntecleer reached through the darkness and 

felt the Deer. He drew back, then, until he was 

standing right next to Pertelote. In a stricken 

voice he said, “Nimbus.” 

“Nimbus!” cried the Hen. “His name is Nimbus! 

Nimbus, too, is dead!” 

That’s what we wanted to teach you—to be honest in 

your naming of the things that will be affected by what 

you do, by the choices you make, to not use dishonest 

words that hide responsibility or outcomes. So when 

you talk about abortion or capital punishment or 

war, you learn to name those affected by such things 

as baby, human being, neighbor. And you learn to 

sadly call what your actions bring about—“death.” 

And you review that “death” is an enemy, not a 

friend, not a solution, not an instrument of peace. It 

is the last enemy, no matter who brings it about. It is 

something to feel rotten about. It itself is an enemy 

to be conquered. What we name things matters. In 

a culture that spins words and creates euphemisms to 

serve personal gain and individual choice, we need to 

call a spade a spade. 

Remember the story of the Golden Calf 

from Exodus Moses is taking too long up on the 

mountain, talking to God, so the people demand 

a god they can lay their eyes on. So Aaron uses a 

tool and makes a golden calf from their rings and 

earrings. When Moses comes down the mountain 

with the two stone tablets of the covenant, he is 

furious at their idolatry and demands an explanation. 


And they all claim “the fire did it.” In one of the 

great spins in the Bible, Aaron says, “I threw the gold 

in the fire and—out came this calf.” Right naming 

counteracts our tendency to blame others and to call 

our disobedience something else. 

In an article in Capital Commentary, a publication 

of the Center for Public Justice in Washington, D.C., 

James Skillen, who taught a few years at Dordt and 

went on to head that organization, reviews the 

following statistics about the US economy: “In the 

26 years between 1979 and 2005, the pre-tax income 

for the poorest households grew by 1.3 per cent a 

year, middle incomes before tax grew by less than 1 

per cent a year, while those of households in the top 

1 per cent grew by 200 per cent pre-tax, and more 

strikingly, 228 per cent post-tax.” Skillen quotes 

John Plender, of Financial Times, who says that 

income inequality in the U.S. today “is at its highest 

since that most doom-laden of years: 1929.” That 

statistic is staggering, and what is impressive is that 

Skillen dares to call the governmental policies that 

precipitated that statistic not natural outcomes of an 

established system, not even mistakes, but immoral 

injustice on the government’s part. That puts the 

discussion on a different plane, one perhaps that 

matches God’s reality. 

During Justice Week at Dordt, on November 

2, 2006, John Hiemstra, a Dordt alumnus and 

Professor of Political Studies at The King’s University 

in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, spoke on the topic 

“Hypnosis, the Myth of Progress, and Our Christian 

Scholarly Calling,” a speech that focused on the 

development of the oil sands in Alberta. The speech 

was reprinted in a recent Dordt Pro Rege. In his 

speech he demonstrated how a Christian scholar 

approaches major cultural problems of our times— 

in part by looking at the language and metaphors 

that are used in the discussion and asking for more 

accurate names. Hiemstra showed how a writer 

for the Edmonton Journal used the metaphor of “an 

economic superhighway” with a few “potholes” in 

describing the oil sands. Here is Hiemstra’s analysis of 

the language: “Potholes may cause inconvenience and 

discomfort, but they are not understood to signal any 

fundamental problems with the superhighway itself. 

The metaphor of potholes in a superhighway implies 

that the highway itself is sound and heading in the 

correct direction” (Pro Rege 36.3.18). Hiemstra ends 

his analysis in a call for Christian scholars, especially 

in Christian higher education, to work out biblically 

inspired approaches to major cultural situations, 

which include the accurate use of language. When 

we talk honestly about an issue, sometimes we realize 

that the supposed progress, as in this case, may need 

to be stopped altogether. 

We wanted to teach you how to courageously, 

insightfully, and truthfully name reality from a 

biblical point of view, and we wanted to caution you 

with the words of Isaiah 5: “Woe to those who call 

evil good and good evil. Who put darkness for light 

and light for darkness. Who put bitter for sweet and 

sweet for bitter.” 

Our son, Luke, a Dordt grad, writes for television. 

He has found that even within the constraints of team 

writing and quite prescribed story lines, there is often 

an opportunity to call dark “dark” and light “light.” 

One year Luke was writing for Smallville, the story of 

the high school days of Clark Kent, Superman. Lex 

Luther is his eternal enemy in the disguise of a friend. 

Here is one scene between Lex and his father, Lionel, 

who at one time was as evil as Lex is becoming, a 

scene in which Luke had an opportunity to call dark 

“dark” and light “light”: 

LIONEL: Listen to me, Lex. I know where you’re 

heading. I see the enemies you’re making. You 

can’t live your life as though your actions have no 

consequences. 

LEX: You did, Dad. 

LIONEL: Yes. I did. I’ve been on the path you’re 

on. I’ve seen where it ends. You go down that 

road far enough, there’s no safe return. 

LEX: You seem to have managed to find your 

way back. 

LIONEL: No, son. Something found me on 

that road and brought me back. I was rescued. 

I only hope you can be rescued, too. Before it’s 

too late. 

You will all have opportunities. Don’t chicken out. 

Don’t fool yourself. Name it right. 

The final thing is this: we tried to teach you 

to name the only name that saves. That’s tough in 

an academic institution where we are teaching you 

to develop culture, you to help the square inches 

reconnect and behave themselves normatively. But 

if we taught you that it was up to you, up to us, then 

we let you down. Yes, we do scientific analysis and 

develop technologies that ease life’s challenges, and 

we must, but Jesus saves. Yes, we do demographic 

studies of enrollment trends and make adjustments so 

that we don’t go broke, and we must, but Jesus saves. 


Yes, we write poems and stories and put on plays to 

share insight into the human struggle to be who God 

created us to be, and we must, but Jesus saves. And 

He sometimes saves in ways far beyond our smart 

calculations. So when we go to bed at night or turn 

on our computers in the morning, our work and our 

hope for that day and the next is built on nothing less 

than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. 

A year ago in April, thirty-one students were 

killed in a classroom building at Virginia Tech. There 

are now thirty-one stones bearing the names of each 

of those victims. And in the center of them all is 

another stone which says, “We will prevail. We are 

Virginia Tech.” As much as we sympathize with the 

students, faculty, and friends who are trying to come 

to terms with what happened there, we can not help 

but realize the empty hope that stone represents. It 

sounds like a cheer at a football game. Instead, as we 

part today, we claim that we will prevail, not because 

we are Dordt College, not because we are Reformed, 

not because we are Christian, not because WE are. 

We will prevail because HE is and HE is Lord. That’s 

the name we must proclaim. 

In a few minutes, you graduates will take on a 

new name, Dordt College Alumni. We will teach 

you no more. Our prayer now is that your education 

here has helped you to find your voice in this world, to 

serve it well for the sake of Him who owns it, naming 

it truthfully, responsibility, and appreciatively. We 

pray that you shout out His name in the language of 

your calling, and, now and then, may you be struck 

utterly silent in the presence of the marvelous grace 

of God. 


Editor’s Note: Alida Sewell’s article was presented to the Sixteenth Century Conference in St Louis, 

Missouri, 2008. 

Nakedness and Shame 

in Calvin’s Writings 

by Alida Sewell 

My aim is to explore the link, which appears 

to be inevitable in Calvin, between nakedness and 

shame. Is this inevitability a result of his personal 

prudery Is it the cultural conditioning of his times 

Is there any room in his thinking for an appreciation 

of the naked body as God created it Why does he 

not more fully comment on the Genesis narrative, 

where it says that Adam and Eve were naked and 

not ashamed (Genesis 2.25) Calvin’s commentaries 

Alida Sewell has been Instructor of French at 

Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, for 

two years and is currently working on her Ph.D. 

from the Free University in Amsterdam, The 

Netherlands. 

and sermons on the stories of Adam and Eve, and 

Noah, and a few others will be analyzed to gain an 

understanding of Calvin’s thinking. The commentary 

on Genesis and the sermons on Genesis both date 

from Calvin’s later years—1554 and 1559 onwards 

respectively—and presumably express his mature 

thoughts. The translations from the French sermons 

are my own. For the Latin commentaries I have relied 

on published translations in English and Dutch. 

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is shame, 

it seems. Where some people see nakedness plain 

and simple, others only see a shameful nakedness. For 

Calvin, bodily nakedness is strongly associated with 

shame and disgrace. He also lists nakedness among 

dire situations such as poverty, famine, diseases, 

and reproaches. He never expresses it as something 

positive, except that before the Fall “there was 

nothing but what was honorable …[;] our parents 

had nothing in themselves which was unbecoming 

until they were defiled with sin.” 1 The Fall, of course, 

caused the defilement of sin. Calvin wonders why 

deformity should appear in only one part of the 

body (and by that he means the genitals), since our 

whole human nature is infected by squalid sins. He 

concludes that it was enough for God that a certain 

shameful sign was conspicuous in the human body 

which would remind us of our sins. This is how he 

links the genitals especially with shame. 2 Augustine 

said something similar when he discussed shame and 

lust. 3 In the very first chapter of his Institutes of 1559, 

Calvin also links nakedness and shame. He writes, 

“For, as a veritable world of miseries is to be found 

in mankind and we are thereby despoiled of divine 

raiment, our shameful nakedness exposes a teeming 


horde of infamies” (ICR 1.1.1). It is true that in this 

particular context Calvin may be thinking of spiritual 

nakedness, in which case he thinks that our fallen 

nature has need of divine clothing, “the garments 

of salvation … and the robe of righteousness” 

of which Isaiah speaks (61.10). But for Calvin, 

In spite of the praise he 

gives to the Creator of 

the human body, every 

mention of nakedness, 

even metaphorical, is 

connected to a word of 

negative connotation, 

such as deformity, 

turpitude, disgrace, or 

ignominy. 

spiritual nakedness and bodily nakedness are both 

characterized by shame. 

In his Commentary on Genesis as well as in the 

Institutes, Calvin goes out of his way to ascribe 

honor to God for the way he created everything, but 

especially humankind. In the Institutes he writes, 

Likewise, in regard to the structure of the human 

body one must have the greatest keenness in 

order to weigh, with Galen’s skill, its articulation, 

symmetry, beauty, and use. But yet, as all 

acknowledge, the human body shows itself to be 

a composition so ingenious that its Artificer is 

rightly judged a wonder-worker. 4 

Also, in the twelfth Sermon on Genesis, Calvin states, 

“Thus we should not be surprised if Adam and Eve 

were not ashamed of being naked, inasmuch as 

there was nothing in their body, nor in their soul 

which was not like a testimony to the goodness and 

wisdom of God. It was without shame; everything 

was honorable.” 5 But in the sixth Sermon on Genesis 

he had already stated that it is the soul that has 

reason, intelligence, and will, “which is much more 

than all that is found in the exterior of the body.” 6 In 

the same sermon he describes the parts of the body, 

which should be an instrument to serve the soul, as 

a kind of weapon with which the devil wages war 

against us in order to lead us to perdition. 7 Whenever 

Calvin compares body and soul, he always values the 

soul above the body. This is where Calvin’s Platonism 

is clearly present. He wants to give honor to the 

Creator of the body, “this corruptible vessel,” but 

Calvin himself values it only insofar as it is the home 

of the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit and thus 

may bear God’s image. 8 

In spite of the praise he gives to the Creator of 

the human body, every mention of nakedness, even 

metaphorical, is connected to a word of negative 

connotation, such as deformity, turpitude, disgrace, or 

ignominy. According to Calvin, the fact that man was 

created in the image of God gives him “the highest 

nobility,” but his being made of the dust of the earth 

should cause him to learn humility (Commentary 

on Gen. 2.7). In his ninth Sermon on Genesis Calvin 

says, “This is what is expected of us, that we should 

always look at our origins, where we have come from, 

in order to lower our eyes and walk in all humility, 

confessing that we are but earth and dust.” 9 The need 

for humility in the face of God’s majesty is a strong 

theme in Calvin’s writings. 

Commenting on the verse, “And they were both 

naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed,” 

Calvin writes, “That the nakedness of men should be 

deemed indecorous and unsightly, while that of cattle 

has nothing disgraceful, seems little to agree with 

the dignity of human nature.” He then continues 

by making a sweeping generalization: “We cannot 

behold a naked man without a sense of shame; yet 

at the sight of an ass, a dog, or an ox, no such feeling 

will be produced. Moreover, everyone is ashamed of 

his own nakedness, even though witnesses may not 

be present.” 

In his twelfth Sermon on Genesis, he expresses 

similar sentiments and goes even further, saying that 

it is a shameful thing for men and women to disrobe. 

Even if a man were to be by himself, he would barely 

look at himself for shame. He continues by saying 

that we should be ashamed to look at our own bodies 

and should also be in a state of blame and shame 

when others see us. 

Calvin attributes all this to the Fall into sin. God 

did not put this sense of shame in the animals after 


the Fall. But God wanted to increase the opprobrium 

that he put in our persons. Speaking of the animals, 

Calvin says, “He did not put such an infamy in their 

bodies.” 

Calvin goes on to say that if there were no 

prohibition or punishment for it, there would be 

many people who would “brutalize” themselves by 

going nude and being a spectacle. Calvin might have 

been thinking about the Anabaptists of Münster, 

who took it upon themselves to proclaim the naked 

truth by walking around naked. The Münsterites 

also practiced polygamy and adultery, excesses that 

horrified Calvin. He probably linked these sins with 

the practice of nakedness. 

The interesting thing here is that when Calvin 

speaks about the original condition of humankind, 

he says that “they were without shame, because God 

created them in this condition, so that his image 

would shine in their bodies, inasmuch as their bodies 

were to be the homes [domiciles] of their souls, which 

were formed and created in the image of God.” 10 The 

“which” refers to the souls. So far, this is the only place 

I have come across where Calvin speaks of the body 

as a home for the soul, and he does so in the context 

of discussing Adam and Eve’s original condition. 

Everywhere else he frequently, some 41 times, refers 

to the body as “the prison of the soul,” a concept 

derived from Plato, though never acknowledged as 

such by Calvin. This prison metaphor appears to 

have informed much of Calvin’s thinking about the 

body. 

This negativity and shame of one’s own body, as 

expressed by Calvin, even in solitary privacy, seems 

extreme. Considering the way poor people lived, 

there must have been some at least in Calvin’s day 

who were somewhat accustomed to nakedness and 

not ashamed or embarrassed at their own or others’ 

nakedness. They probably bathed in streams and 

lakes. There were public baths in his time, but, as 

Luther records, 

… the more modest and more serious people 

… avoid the public baths, although the private 

parts are carefully covered both by women and 

by men. 11 

Therefore, we may surmise that Calvin’s sense of shame 

about the body must have arisen out of his personal 

prudery and prejudices. Calvin nowhere admits that 

the innocence about our naked body, which we lost 

in the fall, may be regained in Christ, even though 

he states, “Scripture everywhere admonishes us of 

our nakedness and poverty, and declares that we 

may recover in Christ what we have lost in Adam” 

(Commentary on Genesis 3.6). In the sermons also, 

Calvin states, “It is said that the Spirit of Christ is 

life, although he lives in our mortal bodies. For there 

is only corruption; it is nothing but a mass of filth 

and villainy in man, it is a vessel full of foul smells, 

until the time that it may be renewed.” He goes on 

to say “Be that as it may, when a little portion of the 

Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ lives in us, it is life, 

says St Paul; it is enough to wash all the rest and to 

take away all that is corrupt in us, and to restore us, 

so that we are participants of the glory of our God 

and of the heavenly life.” 12 But, in spite of the lifegiving 

Spirit in our bodies, and the participation in 

God’s glory, Calvin sees the body only as unworthy, 

something to be ashamed of, with no restoration in 

sight until the resurrection. 

The question arises, “Why does Calvin emphasize 

the negative so much, when he also seems to appreciate 

the renewing power of the Holy Spirit in man” He 

even states that God’s grace “is more abundantly 

poured forth, through Christ, upon the world, than 

it was imparted to Adam in the beginning.” 13 If he 

really believed that, should he not have had a more 

positive view of the human body While Calvin may 

have applied the recovery to spiritual nakedness and 

poverty, he did not extend it to his feelings about the 

body. Nor did he apply the more abundant grace to 

his appreciation of the body. For Calvin, “we have 

nothing with which to glorify ourselves, … for we 

are nothing but earth and mud, when all is said and 

done.” 14 

Calvin sometimes asserts that the image of 

God only applies to the soul and consists of reason, 

intelligence, and will. Here he echoes Augustine. 

Spiritual life is only present in reason, intelligence, 

and will, not in the body. 15 This is Hellenistic rather 

than Biblical thinking. 

At other times he seems to suggest that the body 

was also made in God’s image, as in Sermon 12 on 

Genesis, where he says, “But, as we said, sin is as 

well shown in the body as in the soul, for all that 

the soul was pure and clean, that it tended towards 

God’s justice, as one could see, there it was that God 

engraved his image in man, and that was also the 

case in the body, which had none of the dissolute 

character it has today.” 16 Further in the same sermon 


he states that there is “nothing but turpitude and 

villainy in our bodies.” 17 

The account of Noah’s drunkenness as interpreted 

by Calvin, in his Commentary on Genesis, is very 

revealing as to his attitudes. Calvin faults Noah 

mainly for his drunkenness, which he calls “a filthy 

and detestable crime,” which made him lose all “selfpossession” 

so that he did “in a base and shameful 

manner, prostrate himself naked on the ground, so as 

to become a laughing-stock to all” (300-301). Calvin 

expresses his usual fears about excesses and going 

beyond bounds, but he is exaggerating here: Noah 

was naked in the privacy of his own tent. There was 

no public spectacle. Nor does the Bible specifically say 

that Noah was “mocked by his own son.” It just says 

that Ham told his two brothers. Most commentators 

agree that the failure of Ham to cover his father, and 

with it the sin of drunkenness, spoke to a character 

fault in Ham that was exacerbated in his son Canaan. 

That fault was a lack of filial respect. Calvin writes at 

length about the respect and reverence that was due 

to Noah as father: “This Ham, therefore, must have 

been of a wicked, perverse, and crooked disposition; 

since he not only took pleasure in his father’s shame, 

but wished to expose him to his brethren” (302). 

Shem and Japheth are praised for their filial respect 

and modesty in covering their father without looking 

on his nakedness. 

The problem with this story is that although it 

was Ham who saw Noah naked, it is his youngest son, 

Canaan, who is cursed. One wonders if something 

was left out of the story. Some authors have suggested 

that what was left out was that Canaan may have 

castrated his grandfather, and the sight of the bloody 

mess was the thing that was so awful as to need 

covering. 18 That would explain why he was cursed. 

Ham is listed as the middle son of Noah, not the 

youngest. Canaan is the youngest son of Ham and 

in that sense the youngest son or grandson of Noah. 

The account clearly states that when “Noah awoke 

from his wine he knew what his youngest son had 

done to him. So he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan.’” If 

his youngest son had merely seen Noah naked, how 

would he know that as soon as he woke Looking 

at someone is not usually described as being done to 

somebody. Therefore, the theory that Canaan had 

mutilated his grandfather may well be a valid one, or 

at least a possible one. 

Calvin, in discussing the story of Noah, reads 

much more into the story than is justified by the mere 

biblical text, and in doing so, he goes outside his own 

stated principles of exegesis. He claims that Ham 

was “reproachfully laughing at his father” and adds, 

“Ham alone eagerly seizes the occasion of ridiculing 

and inveighing against his father” (Commentary on 

Genesis, 302). Neither claim is substantiated by the 

text. As critical as Calvin is of Ham, so he is approving 

of Shem and Japhethz: 

And thus they gave proof of the regard they paid 

to their father’s honour, in supposing that their 

own eyes would be polluted, if they voluntarily 

looked upon the nakedness by which he was 

disgraced. At the same time they consulted their 

own modesty. For (as was said in the third chapter) 

there is something so unaccountably shameful in 

the nakedness of man, that scarcely any one dares 

to look upon himself, even when no witness is 

present. 19 

Calvin, in discussing 

the story of Noah, reads 

much more into the 

story than is justified by 

the mere biblical text, 

and in doing so, he goes 

outside his own stated 

principles of exegesis. 

Note that Calvin states that it is “unaccountably 

shameful.” If he could not account for it, he 

should have reconsidered why nakedness should be 

shameful, especially for someone who believes that 

God himself designed and made the human body! In 

commenting on the curse, Calvin rather ties himself 

in knots trying to justify the curse on Canaan, while 

it was Ham’s behavior, in Calvin’s eyes, that deserved 

the condemnation. Various exegetes have suggested 

that the curse was a prophetic one on a tribe, headed 

by Canaan, that would later be known for ungodly, 

idolatrous, and sexually perverse behavior and the 

enemy of Israel. So the viewing of the nakedness (if 


that was all that occurred) was the occasion of the 

prophetic curse but not the direct cause. 

Calvin’s discussion of circumcision also yields 

some interesting comments. Calvin’s unease about 

circumcision is expressed in his comments on 

Genesis 17.11, where the rite of circumcision was 

first commanded to Abraham and his offspring. 

Calvin calls the command to circumcise “very strange 

and unaccountable … at first sight.” 20 He finds it 

hard to credit the idea that the sign of so great a 

mystery should be situated in the shameful parts. 21 

He even thinks that “God seems to us foolishly to 

have commanded” circumcision. It was “necessary 

for Abraham to become a fool, in order to prove 

himself obedient to God.” Calvin concludes that 

circumcision was a sign of repentance, and that God’s 

aim was to “completely abase the pride of the flesh.” 

Calvin seems to have been unaware that circumcision 

was common among the peoples of the Ancient Near 

East, as he calls the rite something “whereby the seed 

of Abraham is distinguished from other nations” 

(Commentary on Genesis, 453-54). It should be noted 

that if no-one went about naked, people would never 

see the distinguishing sign of circumcision, and so it 

would be pointless as far as being a witness to others 

of God’s special relationship with the Jews. And if 

other tribes around them also circumcised their 

males, there would be no peculiar aspect to it. 

Calvin further comments on circumcision in 

his commentary on Isaiah, where God commands 

Isaiah to go round naked for three years (Gen. 22.3). 

Here too, Calvin reveals much about his views on 

nakedness. First of all, he states that if anyone went 

around naked of his own accord he would be “justly 

ridiculed,” but not if God commands it. This is a 

strange manner of reasoning, as if God acts totally 

apart from the very morality that he requires of his 

people. In response to those who said that nakedness 

would be unbecoming in a prophet, Calvin agues 

that this “nakedness was not more unbecoming than 

circumcision, which irreligious men might consider 

to be the most absurd of all sights, because it made 

an exposure of the uncomely parts. Yet it must not 

be thought that the Prophet went entirely naked or 

without covering those parts which would present 

a revolting aspect [italics added].” 22 Note these 

negative words in regard to what God had created. 

He concludes on this matter, “I am therefore of 

the opinion that Isaiah walked naked whenever 

he discharged the office of a prophet, and that he 

uncovered those parts which could be beheld without 

shame” (Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah 

88). In other words, he was not really naked. 

In this way, Calvin reveals how he associates 

shame with the human body and distorts the plain 

meaning of Scripture to accommodate his negative 

feelings about the body in general, and genitals in 

particular. In the Bible passage it is clear that Isaiah’s 

nakedness was to exemplify the forced nakedness of 

the captives who had their buttocks uncovered, so 

we may assume that naked did indeed mean naked. 

Prisoners of war were usually stripped naked to be 

humiliated. In the sermons on Micah, Calvin notes 

nakedness as being a result of involuntary removal 

to a foreign land, the result of their sin, their “malice 

and rebellion” (Micah 1.11). So Calvin is aware of 

this manner of humiliating prisoners of war. But 

because he is uncomfortable with the picture of a 

prophet of God literally acting out this condition, so 

he changes it to mean partially clothed. 

My provisional conclusions are as follows: Calvin’s 

discomfort and feelings of shame about the body are 

probably at least partially related to his own ill health 

throughout most of his life. Still, in commenting on 

the various Bible passages we discussed, he ought 

not to have read more into them than is present. 

What he read into them was informed more by his 

prejudices and prudery than by the actual words of 

Scripture. By sometimes reading more into the text, 

as in the Noah account, or by sometimes changing 

the plain meaning of the text, as in Isaiah, Calvin 

betrayed his own exegetical principles in order to 

accommodate his prudery. Moreover, he should 

have more consistently applied his teaching that in 

Christ we are restored to our innocence. Just because 

bodies are often troublesome and pained, and are not 

perfect, does not mean they are full of turpitude or 

something to be ashamed of. 

Endnotes 

1. Opera Calvini 23.51(Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt 

omnia, Ed.W. Baum, E. Cunitz & W. Reuss 

[Brunswick 1863-1900]): “Nunc satis habet dicere, 

in natura integra nihil nisi honorificum fuisse: unde 

sequitur, quidquid in nobis probrosum est, esse culpae 

nostrae imputandem, quia parentes nostri nihil in se 

habebant non honestum, donec peccato foedati sunt.” 

Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, tr. John King (Grand 

Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948; first published in England, 

1847), 137. 


2. Commentary on Genesis, 159 in f.n. 4: “Sed Deo fuit 

satis, extare in corpore humano aliquam pudendam 

notam, quæ nos peccati commonefaciat.” OC 23.65. 

3. City of God, Book 14, Chapter 20, last paragraph. 

4. Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.5.2: “Similiter 

in humani corporis structura connexionem, symmetriam, 

pulchritudinem, usum, ea quam Galenus 

adhibet, solertia pensiculare, eximii est acuminis. Sed 

omnium tamen confessione, prae se fert corpus humanum 

tam ingeniosam compositionem, ut ob eam 

merito admirabilis opifex iudicetur.” 

5. SC XL/1,58 (Supplementa Calviniana Sermons inedits. 

Ed Erwin Mulhaupt et al. [Neukirchener Verlag, 

1936-1961]), Sermon 12 on Genesis: “Ainsi ne nous 

esbahissons pas si Adam et Eve n’ont point eu honte 

d’estre nudz, d’autant qu’il n’y avoit rien en leur corps 

non plus en leur ame qui ne fust comme tesmoignage 

de la bonté et sagesse de Dieu. Or cela estoit sans 

vergogne; tout y estoit honorable” (148). 

6. SC XI/1, 58, Sermon 6 on Genesis du samedi 9e jour 

de septembre 1559: “l’ame, comme j’ay dit, a la raison, 

intelligence et volunté, qui est beaucoup plus que 

tout ce qu’on trouvera en ce corps exterieur.” 

7. SC XI/1, 60, Sermon 6 on Genesis: “nostre corps, qui 

doit estre instrument pour servir à l’ame, … toutesfois 

il est comme pour equiper le diable, pour nous faire la 

guerre … à fin de nous mener à perdition.” 

8. SC XI/1, 61, Sermon 6 on Genesis: “Si nous regardons 

à nostre corps, il est formé de terre, et cependant Dieu 

a eleu ce vaisseau corruptible, et mesmes où il n’y a nul 

honneur ni dignité, il l’a voulu faire domicille de ses 

graces et des dons de son saint Esprit, tellement que 

nous portions son image.” 

9. SC XI/1, 97, Ninth Sermon on Genesis: “Voilà donc 

ce qui nous est icy proposé: d’une part, c’est que nous 

regardions tousjours à l’origine dont nous sommes 

sortiz, pour baisser les yeux et chemyner en toute 

humilité, confessant que nous sommes que terre et 

poudre ….” 

10. SC XI/1, 147, Sermon 12 on Genesis: “il signifie qu’ilz 

estoient sans honte, pource que Dieu les avoit creez à 

ceste condition, que son image reluit en leur corps, 

d’autant que leurs corps estoient les domiciles de leurs 

ames qui estoient formées et creé[e]s à l’image de 

Dieu.” I have summarized Calvin’s argument preceding 

this quotation. 

11. Luther’s Works Vol. 1, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis: 

Concordia, 1958), 139. 

12. SC XI/1, 98-99, Sermon Nine on Genesis: “Mais il 

est dit que l’esprit de Jesus Christ est vie, combien 

qu’il habite en noz corps mortelz. Car il n’y a corruption; 

ce n’est qu’une masse d’ordure et de villeinye que 

l’homme; c’est un vaisseau plein de puantise, jusques 

à ce qu’il soit renouvellé. Or, quoi qu’il en soit, quand 

il y habite quelque petit portion de l’esprit de nostre 

Seigneur Jesus Christ en nous, c’est vie, dit saint Paul; 

cela suffit pour laver tout le reste et pour oster tout 

ce qui est de corruption en nous, et nous restaurer, 

en sorte que nous sommes participans de la gloire de 

nostre Dieu et de la vie celeste.” 

13. Commentary on Genesis, p. 158. OC 23.64: “Nam uberior 

eius gratia per Christum effusa est in mundum, 

quam Adae collata esset a principio.” 

14. SC XI/1, 96, Sermon Nine on Genesis, “nous n’avons 

point de quoy nous glorifier, … car nous ne sommes 

que terre et fange, quand tout sera conté.”. 

15. As, for example, in SC XI/1, 99, Sermon 9: “il n’y a 

que l’ame en laquelle nostre Seigneur nous a formez à 

son image.” And in SC XI/1, 116, Sermon 10: “Il faut 

comprendre la vie spirituelle qui est en la raison, intelligence 

et volunté.” 

16. SC XI/1, 147, Sermon 12 on Genesis: Mais, comme 

nous avons dit, le peché s’est aussi bien monstré au 

corps comme à l’ame, car tout ainsi que l’ame estoit 

pure et nette, qu’elle tendoit à la justice de Dieu, qu’on 

povoit veoir, voilà Dieu qui a engravé son image en 

l’homme, cela estoit aussi bien au corps, qu’il n’y avoit 

point d’intemperature comme aujourduy.” 

17. Ibid, p. 148. “Que en nos corps il n’y a que turpitude 

et villennye.” 

18. See “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” The 

Harvard Theological Review, 73:1/2 (Jan. – Apr., 

1980), 321-330 and “Noah’s Nakedness and the curse 

of Canaan. A Case of Incest” Vetus Testamentum 21:2 

(Apr., 1971), 232-237. 

19. OC 23:151-152. In John King’s translation, p. 303. 

20. Commentary on Genesis 17.11, p. 453. OC 23:240- 

241, “Valde absurdum specie ac ridiculum videri potuit 

hoc mandatum.” 

21. “Tanti mysterii insigne statui in pudendis partibus.” 

OC 23:241. 

22. Comm. on Isaiah Vol. 2, trans. William Pringle (Grand 

Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 88. 


A Free Christian 

University: Review Essay 

by Keith Sewell 

Arie Theodorus van Deursen, The Distinctive 

Character of the Free University in Amsterdam, 1880- 

2005: A Commemorative History, translated by 

Herbert Donald Morton. Grand Rapids: William B. 

Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008, ISBN: 978- 

0-8028-6251-8, 538 pp. incl. bibliography. 

Some books, as soon as they are announced, 

find their way to the top of my “must read” list. 

This is one of them. Translated by Donald Morton, 

this is the first history of the Free University in 

Amsterdam (FU) in the English language. The 

author, Arie Theodorus Van Deursen, is Professor 

Dr. Keith Sewell is Professor of History at Dordt 

College. 

Emeritus of modern history at the FU; therefore, 

the latter portions of this work are written from 

the standpoint of the participant-observer. This is 

a personal account, without any mask of presumed 

objectivity. As the preface states, Abraham Kuyper 

(1837-1920) saw the establishment of the FU in 

1880 as his greatest achievement. Its twofold purpose 

was to train in science and scholarship according to 

Reformed principles and to produce an educated 

leadership for those institutions representative of the 

Reformed side of Dutch national life (xiii). After the 

Doleantie crisis of 1886 resulted in the formation of 

the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), it was 

the Gereformeerde portion of the Reformed in the 

Netherlands that the FU both served and from which 

it received support. The FU was envisaged in terms 

of Kuyper’s teaching on “sphere sovereignty,” the 

theme of Kuyper’s inaugural address: Souvereiniteit 

in eigen kring. As van Deursen puts it, “all spheres of 

life are independent of each other” and “possess their 

sovereignty by the grace of God” (20). Accordingly, 

a university distinctively Reformed (here specifically 

Gereformeerd, meaning “re-reformed”) in character 

was necessary if science and scholarship were to be 

pursued in an authentically Reformed manner (21). 

Van Deursen undoubtedly admires this grand 

vision, yet as we read chapter after chapter, it is 

possible to detect the presence of what amounts to an 

arrière-pensée. It is detectable when he suggests that 

the FU was free only from 1880 to 1886 and was 

thereafter bound to the GKN denomination, which 

only terminated the relationship in 1999 (190, 444). 

Certainly, van Deursen is clear that especially since 

the level of government funding rose to 100 percent 

in 1968 (241), the FU was inevitably subjected to 


successive waves of governmentally-decided policy 

and budgetary changes (250 ff.) and cannot be said 

to be truly “free” as originally envisaged (318 ff.). In 

the last half-century the FU has experienced student 

radicalism and neo-Marxism of the 1960s and 1970s, 

with all their distractions (375), state-imposed 

budgetary regimes (420-28), and the many maladies 

of contemporary higher education (411-12). 

Yet the question that 

seems everywhere 

implied, but never 

explicitly formulated, is 

this: “Was the FU ever 

truly free” 

Yet the question that seems everywhere implied, 

but never explicitly formulated, is this: “Was the FU 

ever truly free” Was it not, at one stage or another, 

bound to Kuyper—his authority and reputation—or 

to the proclivities of its supporting constituency, or 

to the GKN as a denomination, or to theology as 

the “queen of the sciences,” or to all of these before it 

latterly became wholly dependent on the state This 

book richly repays interrogation on this basis. So, 

was the FU ever free of Kuyper and his reputation 

As one early, friendly observer put it, “it never 

entered the minds of his listeners that Kuyper might 

occasionally be wrong” (1). Insisting that the faculty 

was indispensable—he was supremely clear on that 

point—Kuyper drew the circle of those deemed 

acceptable very tightly (11, 15-20). A fortress 

mentality prevailed (96). Kuyper launched the FU 

on the basis of majestic general principles, but these 

still needed to be unpacked (55) and were only given 

rigorous theoretical articulation half a century later 

by Dirk Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd (21), 

the “rambunctious young men” of the 1920s and 

1930s (175). 

We may also inquire if the FU was ever free 

of its constituency. Its initial establishment was 

made possible financially by the gifts of some forty 

wealthy persons (11). The wider GKN supporting 

constituency contributed small sums in large 

numbers and was not to be ignored. Yet its pietistic 

tendencies could chafe against the life and priorities 

of an institution of higher learning, as, for example, 

when the staging of Charley’s Aunt gave offense 

(125-26). The constituency itself generally lacked 

higher education (43). Of itself it could not always 

supply sufficiently qualified persons to fill academic 

positions, especially as the FU expanded (359 f.). 

Sometimes it had to be placated by explanation. For 

example, after a conference on “the age of the earth” 

in 1950, Jan Lever and J. R. Van de Fliert had to 

explain to the gereformeerd constituency the cogency 

of the evidence that the earth is millions of years old. 

These professors said “yes” to evolution and “no” to 

evolutionism (224-5, 252, 265-8). After 100 percent 

governmental funding was introduced, the old-style 

supporters found themselves upstaged (244, 303). 

There emerged a situation in which the Board of 

Governors of the [supporting] Association “gave the 

university its character,” while the Board of Directors 

of the University were the “real administrators” (353). 

The former experienced displacement by the latter, 

not least because a voluntary association cannot 

govern a large institution (354, 398). 

The FU was not simply Reformed—it was 

denominationally gereformeerd (GKN) and politically 

oriented to the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), led 

by Kuyper. The relationship was tight. When the 

anti-revolutionary political movement split over the 

widening of the electoral franchise, the redoubtable 

Alexander Frederik de Savornin Lohman (1837-1924) 

supported the anti-enlargement Christian Historical 

Union and its publication De Nederlander, and as he 

found himself in opposition to Kuyper’s ARP and 

De Standaard, his days at the FU were numbered 

(50f.). To uphold “sphere sovereignty” in practice, 

its supporters found it necessary to contrive a certain 

cross-institutional synchronization, notwithstanding 

the distinctive integrity of church, party, and 

university. As if to underline the ambiguities, in 

1903 Directors were required not only to uphold 

the declared basis of the FU but also to be members 

of the GKN (48). It is hardly surprising that at the 

FU, intra-gereformeerde family ties could have a 

significant if imponderable influence—“across” the 

spheres, so to speak—in the making of appointments 

(53). A kind of tribalism seemed to be in play. Hans 

Rookmaaker appears as the first professor born 

outside the gereformeerde fold (269). 

The “sphere sovereignty” principle declared 


that ecclesiastical pronouncements had “no force 

for the university” (133). However, when a FU 

graduate, the preacher J. G. Geelkerken, raised the 

issue of whether Genesis chapter 3 should be read 

literally (as factual) or literarily, the fat was in the 

ecclesiastical fire. The (GKN) Synod of Assen of 1926 

condemned Geelkerken, geology, and archaeology 

notwithstanding, although there were those who 

never accepted this verdict, including some of his 

students at the FU (129-132). The question drew 

attention to the linkage between the relation of the 

Bible to learning and the relation of learning to the 

Bible (cf. 356). The demands of the latter are not 

set aside by recognizing either the non-neutrality of 

science or its distinctive integrity (60, 88, 171). In 

my judgment, Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was 

right in asserting that “The facts that geology has 

brought to light are just as well words of God as 

are the contents of Holy Scripture, and thus to be 

accepted by every believer” (129). Latterly, Bavinck 

came to see the gereformeerden as “surrounded by a 

high wall” and unable to “move ahead”—the great 

theologian contemplating a switch to philosophy in 

his latter years (96). The Assen decision impacted 

science—and training in science is the task of the 

university—as well as the churches. At this time, 

says van Deursen, “the interplay between the church 

structure and theological science permeated church 

life with a spirit of anxious conservatism and strong 

regulation” (190). 

All this raises the question of whether the FU 

was ever free of theology as the queen of the sciences. 

For many years, theology attracted the most students 

(161). The initial theological orientation of the FU 

was towards the scholasticism of Gijsbertus Voetius 

(1589-1676) (26). The key figure was Valentine 

Hepp, who joined the faculty in 1922. He was 

oriented towards the systematic theology of “old 

Princeton” professor Charles Hodge (1797-1878) 

(91-2). Assen demonstrates that the doctrinal tone 

of the GKN was then staunchly conservative. The 

publication of the Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schrift 

series of Bible commentaries testified to a strong 

disregard of biblical criticism. The prevailing ethos 

was “allergic to critical historical research” (93). And 

here we encounter a significant lacuna. The FU, 

under Kuyper, stood for “Neo-Calvinism”—a term 

first used by Prof. A. Anema in 1897 (88). This Neo- 

Calvinism went further than Calvin, requiring the 

historical study of Calvinism in order to discern the 

realization of its basic principles in history. Yet there 

was no chair of history at the FU in the nineteenth 

century (56-57). 

Into this context came Vollenhoven and 

Dooyeweerd. They collaborated philosophically from 

1921 onwards and received faculty appointments in 

1926. Van Deursen suggests that Dooyeweerd was 

Vollenhoven’s alter ego (108). Vollenhoven developed 

his “problem-historical method” for the analysis of 

Western philosophy, and Dooyeweerd developed his 

“philosophy of the cosmonomic law idea.” Here were 

“two original minds of international allure”: the FU 

reached its high-point in their hey-day (176, 189, 

cf. 384-86). Their writings, as is often the case with 

philosophy, proved to be not very accessible (140- 

42, 171-73). Nevertheless, Dooyeweerd’s inaugural 

address was memorable, and he gained the reputation 

of being a clear lecturer (171) and was even cheered 

by students (154) at a time when the GKN was losing 

the allegiance of its youth (137). As these philosophers 

entered a milieu still dominated by the old scholastic 

theology represented by Hepp, they and Hepp 

clashed. The philosophers understood “the soul” as the 

whole person, challenging the “rational soul” of the 

scholastics (174). This was just one flashpoint. More 

basically still, “Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd denied 

that reformational philosophy would be bound by 

existing theology,” while Hepp and his supporters 

held “to the contrary that the other sciences must 

submit to the tutelage of theology” (175). Hepp, who 

published against the philosophers, asserted that “real 

science” could not contradict scripture as construed 

by scholastic theology (188, 190-91). Of course, it is 

imperative to distinguish between the world-picture 

of the biblical writers and a biblically directed worldview. 

W.J.A. Schouten, a critic of Hepp’s Stone Lectures 

on Calvinism and the Philosophy of Nature (1930), 

maintained that Hepp “does not know, or at least 

knows only superficially, the modern world picture, 

which he rejects” (188). Hepp’s fundamentalist-style 

Biblicism—which foisted a scientific agenda on the 

scriptures that they never claim for themselves— 

prompted J. P. de Gaay Fortman to acknowledge that 

a gap had opened up between the natural scientists 

and scholastic theologians: “We have no idea what 

to do with the prehistoric finds. Evolution solves the 

problem, but orthodox theologians know nothing of 

it” (189). Of course, the Bible is a book for science 

(and everything else) but not a book of science. And 


so, while Hepp was aiming his fundamentalist-style 

salvoes at Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd, the appeal 

of Karl Barth (1886-1968) amongst the theologically 

literate gereformeerden grew a-pace (190-91). Hepp 

was a prime mover in the dismissal of the widelyrespected 

preacher Klaas Schilder, while Vollenhoven 

and Dooyeweerd were opposed. The action helped 

provoke a movement of secession from the GKN, in 

the form of the “vrijmaking” of 1944. Nothing was 

ever the same again (202-6). After the war, for a time, 

the gereformeerden, lacking a forward orientation, 

stuck to their “eternal principles” and “hold the dike” 

stance, but the artificial barriers they had erected 

collapsed with the coming of television (215, 237). It 

is hard not to conclude that the same circumstances 

that gave rise to the FU’s inception in the era of 

gereformeerd cohesiveness constituted a constraint to 

its development once that cohesiveness dissolved (cf. 

234). 

There are, of course, some criticisms to be made. 

The appointment of C. A. van Peursen is underdiscussed 

(272), and Reijer Hooykaas’ denial of even 

the possibility of Christian philosophy requires further 

contextualization (217). The failure to acknowledge 

the immense contribution of Bob Goudzwaard is 

both puzzling and grievous. Nevertheless, this volume 

is most welcome and would be well-complemented 

by equally candid English-language volumes on the 

GKN and the ARP, now both departed from the 

scene. 

The tender yet tenacious plant of integral 

Christian scholarship constantly seems to find itself 

in institutional settings vulnerable to the more 

powerful interventions of denominational concerns, 

governmental requirements, and commercial 

prioritization. That is its predicament. These 

potentially pre-empting and undermining challenges 

do not invalidate Kuyper’s “sphere-sovereignty” 

principle but point to the supreme importance of 

thinking and acting normatively, rather than in terms 

of pragmatic and opportunistic goal-setting. As we 

consider the prospects for Christian higher education 

in the twenty-first century, it is incumbent upon us to 

ponder the cautionary implications of van Deursen’s 

narrative. 


Book Reviews 

Cacioppo, John T., & Patrick, William. Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. New 

York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. 317 pp. ISBN: 978-0-393-06170-3. Reviewed by Jessica Clevering, 

Instructor of Psychology at Dordt College, Iowa. 

My housemate once said that loneliness is the emotional 

equivalent to chronic back pain: you wrestle yourself out of 

bed in the morning and push yourself through the day, but 

it is still always there. 

Loneliness can cause this kind of pain because, 

according to psychologist and University of Chicago 

professor John Cacioppo, human beings require social 

connection. He should know: he has studied the individual 

in society for the past three decades. Cacioppo is perhaps 

best known for his work in the area of persuasion, but he 

has also conducted research in almost every area of social 

psychology, from political behavior to neuropsychology. 

Relevant to this book, Cacioppo conducts longitudinal 

research to track changes in loneliness over time and 

compares them to changes in physical health. 

Cacioppo and his co-author, science writer William 

Patrick, use the results of this study and many others to 

illustrate the basic human need for social connection. 

Through his book, Cacioppo intends to “help the socially 

satisfied get from good to great, while at the same time 

helping the lonely regain control of their lives” (19). 

Although this goal seems like the thesis of a self-help book, 

Cacioppo dedicates most of the book to describing research 

rather than offering advice. 

The first chapter primes the reader for a book about 

subjective feelings of loneliness and how to overcome them. 

Cacioppo begins by explaining the construct of loneliness 

and how it can be measured. The commonly-used UCLA 

Loneliness Scale contains questions like, “How often do 

you feel that no one knows you well” and “How often do 

you feel that you lack companionship” Cacioppo found 

that subjective feelings of loneliness (how lonely a person 

feels) were a better predictor of physical health than an 

objective measure of isolation (the actual number of friends 

and connections a person has). 

The rest of the book is about its subtitle, human nature 

and the need for social connection, and the research that 

bears on this question. For example, Cacioppo describes 

studies in which participants who were made to feel socially 

rejected engaged in more imitative behaviors than those 

who were not rejected. Specifically, when some started 

shaking their foot, these participants more often began to 

shake their foot as well. In another study, participants were 

given a survey and the researchers pretended to calculate 

the results. Half of the participants were randomly selected 

to be told that their results showed they would probably 

be alone for the rest of their lives. The other half of the 

participants were told they would probably always have 

meaningful relationships. The research revealed that when 

people were told that they would probably be alone for 

the rest of their lives, they performed more poorly on 

subsequent memorization and logic tests than people 

who were given the prediction of companionship. These 

studies suggest the importance of social connection for 

everyday functioning. In his overview of social connection, 

Cacioppo includes a range of research, such as oxytocin 

levels in prairie voles, sex behaviors among bonobos, obesity 

in friendship groups, and human sleep patterns. He uses 

plenty of case studies and examples to illustrate his points 

and comments on scholars from Hobbes and Descartes to 

Darwin and E.O. Wilson. He even includes poets like John 

Donne to emphasize the importance of social connection 

for human functioning. 

In discussing social connections, however, he glosses 

over the distinction between loneliness (the subjective 

and negative emotion) and aloneness (objective social 

isolation). This is unfortunate, because Cacioppo’s own 

research shows that the two do not exist in a one-to-one 

correlation. A person who feels very lonely might have 

extensive social connections, and a person can be socially 

isolated without feeling lonely. Cacioppo especially neglects 

this distinction when he uses evolutionary psychology to 

explain the subjective feeling of loneliness as an adaptive 

reaction to isolation. Early human beings would have 

needed to be socially connected in order to survive in 

harsh environments. Those with the tendency and ability 

to make social connections and maintain social ties would 

have been more likely to survive by creating societies that 

divided labor and engaged in reciprocal care-taking. Those 

who were not part of a group would not survive to pass 

on their genes. Thus, loneliness is an emotion that signals 

the danger of ostracism, as the ostracized could not survive 

on their own. In other words, the negative emotion of 

loneliness should impel a person to seek community and 

thereby survive. 

Cacioppo’s use of evolutionary psychology as an 

explanatory device detracts from the rich research he 

presents in his book, some of which seems to contradict 

his evolutionary explanation. For example, he states 

that loneliness is an adaptive emotion, driving people 


to integrate into society. Later he states that loneliness is 

maladaptive because lonely persons are less able to focus 

their thoughts on mental tasks and are more obsessed 

with social cues These drawbacks leave the lonely person 

unable to make the social connections that would reduce 

their loneliness. His evolutionary explanation claims that 

loneliness prompts people to make social connections in 

order to reduce the negative emotion of loneliness. But 

mere social connections do not do so. Instead, the research 

shows that people need meaningful connection to reduce 

loneliness. Cacioppo does not provide the reader with an 

evolutionary explanation of why meaningful relationships 

should provide more survival value, nor does he explain 

how loneliness changed from being adaptive to being 

maladaptive in our society. 

Despite this confusion, one of the major benefits 

of this book is its broad scope. It brings many areas 

of psychological research to bear on the issue of social 

connection and clearly shows the negative effects of 

living outside of community. Although its argument that 

loneliness is involved in the relationship between social 

connectedness and genetic survival is weak, the book is 

strong in showing the effects of meaningful connections 

on physical and mental well-being. 

The book is very accessible, and the authors write 

clearly about research that is usually ensconced in technical 

jargon. This book would be an excellent starting point 

for those outside of psychology who are interested in 

social connection and isolation. If readers focus less 

on the evolutionary interpretations and more on the 

unique research, they can begin to see how important 

meaningful social connections are for spiritual flourishing 

and individual well-being. They can also take to heart the 

warning on extreme individualism. Living for the self is 

harmful to the self, and this is a conclusion with which 

Christians readers can especially agree. 

David Brown, God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, xii 

+ 464 pp. ISBN 9780199231829. £ 30. Reviewed by Alida Sewell, Instructor of French at Northwestern 

College, Orange City, IA, and doctoral student of Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This review 

was originally published in Church History and Religious Culture, Volume 88, Number 2, 2008, pp. 302-305, 

which has given permission for this re-publication. 

This book is the second of three related volumes. The 

first was God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human 

Experience (2004) and another appeared in April 2008 as 

God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor 

and Drama. Frequent references to the earlier and the later 

volumes (28 out of 1582 footnotes, plus references in the 

text) may tantalize the reader to seek out the other volumes 

in order to get the complete picture, although one suspects 

there is also some overlap. The subtitle of the present 

volume indicates the direction of Brown’s argument, 

namely, that “all the world should be seen as sacramental, 

as imbued through and through with divine presence” ( 4). 

In this volume, Brown is particularly concerned with “how 

body might mediate experience of God” (3). 

Brown divides his book into three parts: “Finding God 

in Bodies,” “Ethereal and Material,” and “The Eucharistic 

Body.” He introduces the whole scope of the book and 

each section as well, preparing the reader for what is to 

come, not only in content but also in conclusions. 

In the Introduction, Brown claims that “modern 

religion has become an optional extra, whereas through 

most of the history of religion it was seen as having a 

bearing on all aspects of life” (1). That may be the case in 

some streams of Christianity, but in neo-Kuyperian circles 

it is forcefully asserted that all of life is religion, that God 

is intimately concerned with all aspects of life, and that 

therefore all of life is to be lived unto God and under his 

rule. Brown, by contrast, employs a nature-grace duality 

of reasoning. 

Brown appears to write from a high Anglican 

tradition (see footnote 116, p.162) but often sounds more 

Roman Catholic. He follows a Catholic trend of writing 

a “Theology of the Body.” However, rather than give a 

theoretical account, Brown seeks to illustrate his views 

with examples from dance, art, and music to bring across 

his point about the body as graced. The human body as a 

creation of God is quickly linked to the body of Christ, in 

his incarnation, in the sacrament, in his resurrection and 

ascension (13). He returns to these themes in Part III. The 

divine presence in a graced body is what Brown seeks to 

reveal. 

Brown seems to me to be derivative rather than original, 

as for example in his discussion of the “culture-relative 

dependence of specific notions of beauty of body” (29-30). 

Is there anyone who does not know this yet Granted, not 

every reader will be familiar with all the examples he cites 

to prove his point, but this point, and others, has been 

made before, as can be seen by glancing at the footnotes. 

On the other hand, Brown makes general statements that 

seem to arise from his own experience but which could be 

challenged by others with a different personal reading or 

viewing histories. He states, “pornography is largely discussed 

in terms of freedom of expressions, scarcely at all 

with regard to the degree to which the forms of behaviour 

it popularizes appeal to an unhealthy male desire to dominate” 

(35). 

In the Chapter on “The Dancer’s Leap,” Brown argues 

that dance may, under the right circumstances, by the 


graced beauty of the dancers, hint at a world entered that is 

otherwise than our present flawed reality. To readers, that 

may be stating the obvious. 

Brown discusses how dance is portrayed in the Bible, 

i.e., positively. This section I found to be quite illuminating, 

bringing meaning to the text not previously appreciated. 

He goes on to discuss dance in ancient Greek culture, in 

Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. He then returns 

to the rather sparse use of dance in the history of Christianity, 

concluding that dance as a metaphor should be replaced by 

its literal counterpart (89). Some of his deductions about 

dance providing the possibility of experiencing the divine 

seem rather forced and unconvincing, but he also discusses 

works that are more obviously religiously oriented. 

My disagreements with Brown arise out of our 

different Christian convictions. For example, from his 

almost Catholic point of view, the dance Messa Concertata 

was “not of course an act of worship, in the sense that no 

altar was used and there was no priest to celebrate the 

mass ….” (109). From my standpoint, and with the 

support of Romans 12:1, what one does with one’s body, 

including dance, can be a “spiritual act of worship.” Some 

of his other interpretations and generalizations may prove 

to be controversial, too. Moreover, by frequently stating 

the obvious, the book can become somewhat tedious. 

In the passage dealing with “gratitude to God in 

adversity” (128-29), Brown takes Mother Teresa as an 

example. He must have written that before her “dark night 

of the soul” became public knowledge with the publication 

of the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (September 

2007). Her “winning smile,” it turns out, did not reveal 

“a tremendous serenity,” as Brown claims, but rather 

obscured her own frequent feelings of alienation from God 

and her longing for “the answering smile of God himself.” 

Yet Brown’s book also has much that is fascinating. His 

observations on hospitality in particular are insightful and 

heart-warming (130-35). Besides, the whole chapter on 

food and drink merits special consideration. 

The second part of the book is devoted to music. Brown 

claims that music in all its variety opens up the possibility 

of experiencing God (even if only partially). Brown seems 

to work from a dualist worldview, that of the sacred and 

the secular, especially when arguing that the themes of 

certain music “widen the range of religious experience 

beyond the church door” (349). How many people ever 

limited religious experience to the church However, in the 

very last chapter he claims to have rebelled against “views 

of religious experience that strongly oppose the sacred and 

the secular, revealed and natural religion” (422). So if he 

is not a dualist, he has been setting up straw men in order 

to tear them down. Perhaps the trouble lies in his use of 

the word “sacrament.” If he had limited that to refer to 

baptism and the Eucharist, and had used “the sacred” to 

denote what potentially “might include all of life” (422), 

then all that we experience in our bodies, minds, and spirits 

can be sacred, set apart for holy use. All of life can be lived 

unto the Lord. 

The chapters on music, especially the one on “Pop 

Music,” rather ignore the body for the most part and have 

more to say about the supposed ability of music to induce 

religious experience. Brown’s talk about music’s “power to 

provide significant openings for the outworkings of God’s 

purposes” (346) seems to be close to suggesting that without 

music God would be unable to work. The argument seems 

rather labored. Just because God or soul are mentioned does 

not necessarily make a song spiritual. And even a distinctly 

spiritual song cannot guarantee a spiritual response from 

the listener, or even the singer, as proven by some of the 

examples mentioned by Brown. Instrumental music can be 

received in various ways also. 

Part III on the “Eucharistic Body” is the smallest 

section of the book. It discusses the history of how the 

church understood the meaning of the Eucharist and 

Christ’s body. Here again, Brown makes generalizations 

that do not resonate with all Christians. 

The abundant references to art, literature, music, 

and other sources are wide-ranging in scope and time. 

Fortunately, it is possible to view and even hear many of the 

artistic works referred to in the book on the internet. Of 

course, that turns reading it into a whole course of culturalmusical 

education! But the fact that the book incites the 

reader to want to check out the sources is an indication of 

the fascination it arouses. 

I noticed some errors of writing and editing, such 

as where Brown mistakenly refers to the “maiden who 

represents poverty” before going on to say that “Only 

poverty is depicted as male” (115). Plate 7 confirms that 

it should be a youth representing poverty. Brown refers to 

Ecclesiastes (398), whereas he means Ecclesiasticus, the 

deuterocanonical book. In the footnotes, the plates are 

referred to as being at the end of the book, whereas they 

are placed in the middle. The plates, with supplementary 

commentary, are in black and white, but Brown helpfully 

refers the reader to publications that provide them in 

color. 

Despite my criticisms of the book, Brown has quite 

whetted my appetite for reading the other volumes in this 

threesome, especially as he promises to discuss the “whole 

issue of the use of body in worship” (91) in the third. 


Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney. (A History 

of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World, vol. II). Downers Grove, IL: 

InterVarsity Press, 2007. 280 pp. incl. bibliography. ISBN: 978-0-8308-2582-0. Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell, 

Professor of History at Dordt College. 

This is the third volume published in the InterVarsity 

Press’ “History of Evangelicalism” sequence, but in 

covering the 1790s to 1840s, this is second in the series 

when it comes to the chronology of the subject. Author 

John Wolffe, formerly of the University of York, is now 

Professor of Religious History at The Open University, 

both in Britain. He is already well-known to students of 

the history of evangelicalism in the British Isles, thanks 

to his landmark publications on The Protestant Crusade 

in Great Britain, 1829-1869 (1991), and God and 

Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and 

Ireland, 1845-1945 (1994). As a mature historian with 

extensive command of his sources, Wolffe here considers 

Anglophone evangelicalism in its prime, centering on the 

third and fourth generations from the initial “founding 

generation.” This was, in England, the generation after that 

of the repentant slave-ship captain, John Newton (1725- 

1807), remembered for writing the song “Amazing Grace,” 

and the poet William Cowper (1731-1800), who gave us 

the magnificent lines “God moves in a mysterious way/ 

His wonders to perform.” 

Wolffe has organized his material thematically, not 

chronologically (43), and this is particularly evident in his 

revealing discussions of worship styles, gender, and family 

(95-158). The three British figures mentioned in Wolffe’s 

title are abolitionist parliamentarian William Wilberforce 

(1759-1833); the purposeful “improving” philanthropist 

Hannah More (1745-1833); Thomas Chalmers (1780- 

1847), the leader of the counter-moderate Evangelical 

Party in the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church 

of Scotland following the “disruption” of 1843; and the 

American revivalist Charles Grandison Finney (1792- 

1875). These figures do not dominate his text, as he is 

writing about evangelicalism in their time rather than 

about these individuals specifically. 

The author’s task is considerable, for by this point 

in its history, evangelicalism was already becoming as 

diverse as it was diffuse. Evangelicals were a recognizable 

party within the Church of England, led by men such as 

Charles Simeon (1759-1836) and later Hugh McNeill 

(1795-1879). They were a major party within the Church 

of Scotland until the “disruption” of 1843, and they were 

a minor party thereafter (93, 221-3). Wesleyan-Methodist 

bodies and a very significant proportion within the older 

bodies that descended from Anglo-Welsh “Protestant 

Dissent” (Congregationalists and Baptists on both sides 

of the Atlantic) must also be included, however diverse. 

And, beyond their Scotts-Irish homeland, there were 

extensive bodies of Presbyterians in the New World. In 

America, Presbyterians had already been divided between 

confessionally-minded “old lights” and revivalist-oriented 

“new lights” at the time of the “first great awakening”—and 

in the period here considered sustained a further division, 

this time between “Old School” and “New School” 

Presbyterianism in 1837 (93). Moreover, Wolffe must 

extend his canvass as far as Australia and New Zealand (14- 

15, 33, 191, 236). 

He explicitly adopts David Bebbington’s rightlyinfluential 

articulation of the four “special marks” of 

evangelicalism: conversionism, activism, Biblicism and 

crucicentrism (19-20). Arguably, these “marks” effectively 

capture the character of evangelicalism. However, they also 

help to explain the increasing lack of cohesion and cultural 

ineffectiveness of evangelicalism. 

Much of the period addressed by Wolffe is co-terminus 

with the so-called “second great awakening” (47f.). This was 

the era of Wilberforce’s co-laborer, Thomas Fowell Buxton 

(1786-1845);Thomas Charles of Bala (1755-84), a key 

figure in the modern history of Wales; and Robert Haldane 

(1764-1842), who took the evangelical message to Geneva 

itself. Yet amid the profusion of personalities, societies, 

trends and developments, it is possible to discern three foci 

in Wolffe’s broad discussion. These pertain to the questions 

of revivalism, of evangelicalism’s stance towards public life, 

and of its failure to achieve any form of functional and 

therefore effective unity. 

It was in America that evangelicalism could fully 

unfold, and it is here that we see its true character most 

comprehensively manifested. Even by the first decades of the 

nineteenth century, it was becoming clear that the deeper 

inclination within evangelicalism was towards Baptist-style 

individualism and a Wesleyan-Arminian understanding of 

the way of salvation. It was the Methodists and Baptists who 

set the pace and made the greatest gains (40-41). Much of 

the evangelical future was adumbrated at and in relation 

to the “revival” at Cane Ridge (56, 58), with its protracted 

exclamatory preaching, intense emotion, and physical 

manifestations among the hearers. This was an ambience 

calculated to convey the notion that we are sovereign in 

our own salvation. From this context there emerged the 

doctrinally Arminian “Cumberland Presbyterian Church” 

(93). When the influences of Cane Ridge and the 

Kentucky “camp meeting” style “revivals” reached England, 

Jabez Bunting (1779-1858), the Methodist leader in the 

old country, himself steeped in the ethos of the Wesley, 

complained bitterly of the excesses of this newer revivalism 

(65, 79). His hostility thereto provoked the formation of 

the Primitive Methodists in England (66). Perhaps it was 

only a matter of time before the ways of revivalism were 

refined to a consciously practiced array of techniques. Here 

we concur that Finney is a decisive figure (72). His doctrine 

and practice confirmed that the main development of 


evangelicalism was away from any kind of Calvinism (74- 

8). Finney’s “new measures”—which had become a kind 

of evangelical orthodoxy by the twentieth century—came 

into prominence in 1837-44, the final years of the “second 

great awakening” (87-8). Others could say that Finney’s 

presumptuous manipulations might account for why the 

awakening came to an end. 

Wolffe works hard to contextualize his subject (22- 

34). He is aware that pre-millennialism implies cultural 

pessimism and retreat (81), although such influences can be 

notoriously difficult to trace in detail. People often do not 

tell us why they think and act in certain ways, and sometimes 

they might misunderstand themselves seriously. The impact 

of “revivals” is likewise hard to assess (69). Although indepth 

discussion is not feasible in a wide-ranging survey, 

Wolffe does not evade the difficult questions. His passage 

on “revivals in context” (89-91) merits the most careful 

consideration. My assessment is that within evangelicalism 

generally, the distinction between “revivalism” as an array 

of evangelistic techniques and the God-given impartation 

and renewal of spiritual life was never as clear as it should 

have been, and by the first half of the nineteenth century, 

that distinction was in the process of being lost by most 

evangelicals themselves. 

Also problematic was the attitude of evangelicalism 

towards society generally, and political life specifically. 

In 1797 Wilberforce published his A Practical View of 

the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in 

the Higher Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with 

Real Christianity (161). This extended tract blasted against 

the prevalent pro-forma “we go to Church on Sundays” 

kind of respectability that masqueraded as Christianity. 

Although the characteristic appeal was to individuals, the 

evangelicals of this period also sought to address social 

issues. They were prodigious founders of societies for 

rectification and improvement (161-92). Yet this activism 

could be in constant tension with the movement’s deeply 

ingrained individualism and conservatism. Evangelicals in 

the American South grew suspicious of Yankee Presbyterian 

and Congregationalist evangelical abolitionist do-gooders 

(189). In Great Britain, the anti-slavery agitation might 

serve as a kind of practical “political apprenticeship” 

(218), but the evangelical exaltation of “heart” over “head” 

meant that the formulation of a coherent and systematic 

understanding of societal structures was not on the agenda. 

Therefore it is not surprising that evangelicals were less than 

sure-footed on Catholic emancipation (217). Moreover, 

when seeking to address public issues, they could find 

themselves promptly entangled in unfinished ecclesiastical 

business. They seemed incapable of addressing the question 

of the reformation of the church. In England, the issues 

between Anglican and Protestant Dissenter remained 

unresolved. In Scotland the disruption of 1843 further 

divided the church, even as the Free Church of Scotland 

continued to uphold the establishment principle. In 

Upper Canada (Ontario) it was the Methodist leader 

Egerton Ryerson (1803-82) who successfully challenged 

the prospect of an established Anglicanism (224-25). 

Intellectually, evangelicalism was lacking in coherence; 

organizationally, it was disparate—all in spite of immense 

commitment and fervor. Wolffe’s conclusion, that by the 

1840s the “political limitations of evangelicalism” were 

“apparent,” is not surprising (227). His purview is the 

“English-Speaking world,” and so he does not consider 

the critique of the religious direction of the times made 

by the Dutch aristocrat Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer 

(1801-76), the author of Unbelief and Revolution (1847) 

and founder of the anti-revolutionary movement in the 

Netherlands, that was to eventually exceed the limitations 

of its initial conservatism and achieve significant structural 

insight into public life. 

In the Anglophone world, evangelicals certainly sensed 

their lack of cohesion. It was a central concern in forming 

the “Evangelical Alliance” in London in 1846 (242-45). 

But no effective unity was achieved. Evangelicalism could 

not overcome the yawning chasm between evangelical 

abolitionists and the stalwart defenders of the “peculiar 

institution.” And neither could the Alliance bridge the 

continuing divide between Anglican and Protestant 

Dissenter. Evangelical unity has almost always amounted 

to little more than subscribing to broad generalizations. In 

Anglophone countries it has tended to be as divided as the 

middle classes to which it is mainly confined (190). Perhaps 

we might envisage evangelicalism as if it were a kind of 

exploding cosmos, with an immense number of fragments 

moving away and breaking off from one another, thanks to 

the explosive force present in the initial core. I am told that 

there are far more than twenty-five thousand Protestant 

denominations in the world today. Certainly, the earliest 

denominational divisions of Anglophone Protestantism 

preceded the coming of evangelicalism in the eighteenth 

century, but it is hard not to conclude that this fracturing 

reflects the influence of evangelicalism worldwide. This 

volume is an excellent survey of evangelicalism at an earlier 

stage of this process, and is strongly recommended. 


Webb, Stephen H. The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound. Grand Rapids, 

Michigan, Brazos Press, 2004. 244 pages. ISBN 9781587430787. Reviewed by Teresa TerHaar, Associate 

Professor of Theatre Arts, Dordt College. 

What do sound, preaching, theatre, listening, stage 

fright, and silence all have to do with each other Many 

things, according to Stephen H. Webb in his book The 

Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of 

Sound. Webb’s engaging and sometimes chaotic book 

attempts to recapture the “sound” of worship in our lives 

today. He argues that we have lost touch with how God 

speaks to us. Often we fill our lives and worship with mere 

noise. It is only when we stop and listen carefully to the 

many sounds of God’s voice that we can then begin to 

speak of Him (and make our own sounds). Along the way, 

The Divine Voice creates a provocative “noise” of ideas in the 

reader’s head. I found myself struggling to make sense of 

the many threads Webb weaves together in the course of 

his argument. Yet, upon finishing the book, I decided this 

struggle was well worth my time. 

A varied audience will find this book engaging. Anyone 

interested in the ideas of sound, speaking, voice, listening, 

and how they connect with theology, church history, 

and worship should read this book. In particular, those 

working in the areas of communication, music, speech 

pathology, theatre, and theology would find much to 

reinvigorate their thinking in these areas. The Divine Voice 

is a rare book in that it provides explicit links among these 

disciplines. Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy 

at Wabash College, moves seamlessly among discussions of 

a theology of sound, of rhetorical skill in communication, 

and contemporary vocal training for actors. The Religious 

Communication Association recognized Webb’s work 

when they awarded The Divine Voice their Book of the Year 

award in 2005. 

Webb structures the book in three parts: the first 

surveys the biblical tradition of the voice as medium of 

God’s revelation in the Bible, the second explores the 

Protestant Reformation as a revival of that tradition, and 

the third discusses how that tradition has been transformed 

by contemporary culture. At the core of the book are 

Webb’s reflections on the “acoustemology of the church.” 

He wants to interrogate the “proper relationship of the 

sound of worship to the voice of the sermon” (27). Webb 

calls this a “theo-acoustics,” or a theology of sound. In 

part, he traces the ever-changing history of the sermon 

and how differing perspectives on the sermon can actually 

affect Christian doctrine. Along the way he continually 

challenges the reader to consider the hypothesis that 

listening carefully is more important than the sounds we 

make. This argument is an interesting one when read in 

the light of the traditional centrality of both the Word and 

words in the Protestant tradition. Webb also discusses the 

role of deafness in Christian history and various theological 

debates over the question of how God created the world 

through sound. 

Two chapters deserve special mention. The first is 

Webb’s analysis of a “theo-acoustics.” He uses the work 

of Walter Ong, Jesuit historian and cultural critic, as 

a touchstone. Although Webb does point out some 

limitations to Ong’s arguments about sound and listening, 

Webb finds them useful as a starting point towards 

understanding the idea of God’s “divine voice” and our call 

to listen through faith. Ong is acutely interested in the 

importance of hearing and listening. Webb summarizes 

some of Ong’s key ideas, writing “The idea that we are most 

present to each other in sound is also true about God’s 

relationship to us. Only the sense of hearing can do justice 

to the way God is simultaneously with us and beyond 

us” (39). Hearing puts us in touch with another person 

in an intimate way at the same time that, paradoxically, 

it preserves some distance between us. Our relationship 

with God is somewhat similar. We hear God’s voice, and 

it affects us powerfully, but we do not have access to His 

physical presence. As a result, the spoken word is enhanced 

into something more deeply spiritual, Ong argues. This 

chapter provides a good foundation for the remainder of 

the book. 

The other significant chapter is titled “Freeing the 

Christian Voice.” In it, Webb uses the work of well-known 

vocal coach Kristin Linklater. Linklater has developed 

one of the best-known systems for teaching voice for the 

actor. Her book, Freeing the Natural Voice, details her 

perspective that the voice embodies the body--one cannot 

only train the voice but must work with the whole human 

body. Webb’s analysis of Linklater’s ideas is remarkable. 

He reconceptualizes her work as almost theological at its 

basis: speaking is the ultimate act of embodiment, or the 

Word made flesh. He then traces the ideas of voice, word, 

and gender, using the stories of Mary and the women at the 

tomb. It is wonderfully ironic that God used the women at 

the tomb to reveal the truth of Christ’s resurrection. They 

heard the angel speak the truth before they saw the truth. 

Then, the women, whose voices at the time were deemed 

unimportant by the men, spoke the good news to the 

disciples. Finally, Webb outlines what the “natural voice” 

of God might sound like. Interestingly, he argues that 

Jesus is the natural voice of God. Webb’s use of Linklater’s 

work in this way opens up new ways of thinking about and 

using her work for theatre practitioners of faith. 

At the heart of my struggle while reading The Divine 

Voice is the eclectic nature of this book. This is both its 

greatest strength and greatest challenge. It is as if the book 

does not quite know what it wants to be—a contemporary 

theological treatise or a historical overview of Christian 

speaking or even a manual on Christian speaking and 


listening. It is all of these things and more. Webb winds 

together threads from many disciplines, jumping from 

theology to history to actor training to Moses to the church 

fathers to contemporary theologians to his own story. At 

times dizzying and always thought-provoking, Webb’s grasp 

of all of these disciplines and ideas is impressive. His use of 

personal examples appears like a breath of fresh air or, more 

appropriately, like a pause in the middle of a complicated 

speech. Stylistically, Webb’s work is almost creative writing 

rather than scholarly writing. Although some may be 

bothered by his more lyrical passages, I enjoyed how they 

engaged my senses in multiple ways. He writes, 

We do not speak first and then think about God 

as speaking too. On the contrary, we can speak only 

because God created us to be hearers of God’s Word. 

We are created in God’s image, but that image is more 

like an echo than a mirror. God spoke us into being 

so that we too might have the joy of sharing in the 

spoken Word (15). 

Webb’s use of language is evocative. The sound of his 

language is part of the pleasure in reading this book. 

Ultimately, Webb challenges us to reconsider how we 

live in a noisy world. Most significantly, he argues that the 

contemporary church must conceive of the Bible as an oral 

book. We need to develop our auditory imaginations by 

hearing the scripture in a new way. We must read scripture 

out loud to discover the “voice” of the text. This means 

using all the skills of the art of rhetoric. God authorized 

scripture to be written, and in the same way He authorizes 

readers to sound it according to his will. This should change 

our worship as a result. Silence, music, and the voice no 

longer sound quite the same after reading The Divine Voice. 

Fittingly, the last pages of the book offer a glimpse of what 

sound will be like in heaven: “In heaven, our voices will 

no longer be carried along by vibrations but instead will 

travel at the speed of grace, and the divine voice will sound 

amazingly sweet” (239). This is a soundscape to long for. 

Erratum 

In the March issue, Jim Schaap’s article, “Reverence, Mystery, and Christian Education,” 

states the following: “One quick story: Many here remember Rev. Tony Van Zanten, who 

ministered faithfully at Roseland, suburban Chicago, before he was called home” (38). Dr. 

Schaap and the editor of Pro Rege deeply regret the error. Rev. Tony Van Zanten lives in the 

Chicago area. 


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