Busy Monday

Monday was busy. I'm only just recovered. First it was the Westminster Fellowship a ministers' fraternal at Westminster Chapel, which meets six times a year on the first Monday of the month. We usually have a speaker these days but on this occasion we reverted to the old method of discussion. Graham Harrison was in the chair. The topic was sexual sin and though the turn out was low the discussion was worthwhile.

I then headed across town to the Evangelical Library near Baker Street where I was chairing the committee. Things are a little quieter with us at present, which is good. Major building works are about to start, including the installation of a lift.

At 6 pm we had our annual lecture. It was gratifying to see over 50 squeezed into the Bob Sheehan Room to hear my father-in-law, Geoff Thomas, speak on Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) author of one of the Banner of Truth's earliest and most popular books - Berkhof's Systematic Theology. He began by relating the experience of Dan De Haan and the benefit he got from Berkhof's systematic theology. We then moved through the complicated background to the Dutch Reformed Churches at the end of the 19th Century, which is never easy to follow. The life of Berkhof, the life of a Dutch-American academic, yields no exciting matter in itself, although it was interesting to know that he never gained a doctorate, only taught 300 men in his career and wrote a third of his output in his final 13 years, also to learn of his baker father and the strong constitution that made him the longest survivor from a large family. He married twice, having been widowed when he was 55. We learned nothing of his first wife Reka but Geoff had unearthed a fascinating account of his courtship of his second wife, Dena, which enlivened the story and gave something of a human face to the man. Geoff also outlined an early pamphlet of Berkhof's on how to deal with the social ills of the day and expressing the wish that it had featured in the systematic theology in some way that we might not gain the wrong impression.

The mystery of the systematic theology with and without (as in the Banner edition) its prolegomena, the manual and then the summary was explained. Very reliant on Bavinck (and Shedd according to the late E Kevan) Berkhof is not hyper-Calvinist but he does not really teach the free offer adequately, which perhaps explains something of the recent history of the Reformed movement.

The message will appear in In Writing as soon as we can expedite that.

Wikipedia gives links to an outline of his systematics and two other works by Berkhof. See here. [Pic: Calvin Theological Seminary Chapel today]