Thursday, August 14, 2008

Prof. Van der Kooi

Last night we had another wonderful meeting at the Theological Society. Prof. Van der Kooi from the Vrij Universiteit van Amsterdam spoke about the nature of Systematic Theology in today's world.

It is his view that Systematic Theology has become a subject of reductionist thinking. The dogmatics of Calvin, Luther, Anselm and others always found its roots in practical Christian living of ordinary Christians. Academic theology only started separating itself from pragmatism in the 19th century. He concluded by stating that the place where an individual thinks that they can do theology outside the church is, for him, "the" Protestant Fallacy. Quite a nice term.

The lecture was presented in Dutch. It was fantastic to hear it again. I took a while to get into it, but after the second glass of wine, he was making a lot of sense. Only joking. My grandfather is Dutch and I haven't heard "Hoog Hollands" for quite some time.

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