Institute For Christian Studies - Background, Founding and Early Faculty

Background, Founding and Early Faculty

The Institute for Christian Studies (ICS), Toronto was founded in 1967.

More than ten years before, a lay movement was initiated amongst Dutch immigrants in Canada to promote academic studies from a Reformational Christian perspective. As a result of that movement, the Association for Reformed Scientific Studies (ARSS) was launched in 1956 in Toronto, Ontario, by a number of pastors, including Dr Paul Schrotenboer, who emerged as key figures in close contact with Dr H. Evan Runner, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Runner had graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and then during studies at Harvard University had served as an assistant to Werner Jaeger, a leading classicist there. Runner then went to the Free University to study philosophy under Dr D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, as would many of the early faculty members of ICS from its inception. In 1958 the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd visited America and suggested to the ARSS - which later became the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship (AACS) - that they write an educational creed. The creed appeared several years later and was drafted by D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, during his subsequent visit and conferencing with Runner, Schrotenboer and others. The prevailing idea was to lay the groundwork for an independent Protestant Christian university modelled after the VU in Amsterdam, not under the governance of the state or any church.

In 1967 the ARSS became the AACS which soon established the Institute. The first professor, called a Senior Member, appointed to serve the new Institute was Dr Hendrik Hart who proceeded to teach worldview studies and philosophy, an appointment which later became specialized to Systematic Philosophy as the number of Senior Members grew. The student body also began to grow in numbers from the outset. A second Senior Member received appointment in ethics and philosophical theology, Dr James Olthius who had graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary and received his doctorate from Dr. André Troost in philosophical ethics. Then, in short order, because of a dispute at another institution in the United States, what may be called "the Chicago School" of thought within Reformational philosophy became available for ICS appointments. Dr Calvin Seerveld in philosophical aesthetics, Dr Arnold DeGraaff in psychology and education, and Thomas McIntire in history (abd). What marked this entire contingent was the strong emphasis on pursuing philosophy and the philosophical foundations of other disciplines, with intense historical depth.

Upon completion of his dissertation under Herman Dooyeweerd, professor of jurisprudence at VU Amsterdam, Dr Bernard Zylstra took up an appointment at ICS as Senior Member in political philosophy. Zylstra had been a student of Runner's as an undergraduate at Calvin College, had received his theological degree at Calvin Theological Seminary, his Master's in Law at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was the only faculty member to have studied directly under Dooyeweerd at VU Amsterdam; he had a strong influence on numerous students who are teaching in political science departments today. Many other ICS Senior Members were also students of Runner and had completed doctorates at VU, as mentioned. The exception among early faculty was McIntire who was writing his dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania at the time of his ICS appointment. He received it a few years later.

At some point, ICS's affiliation with VU required that a full-time Senior Member in History of Philosophy be added to the faculty, so that candidates for the PhD program in philosophy sponsored by VU, could meet VU's own internal requirements regarding the credit hours in discipline of history of philosophy, a trademark of VU's philosophy faculty since its establishment under Vollenhoven. ICS was quite amendable to this arrangement. Runner, Hart, and Seerveld had all studied history of philosophy directly under Vollenhoven. A recently graduated fourth Senior Member "promoted" by Vollenhoven, Dr Al Wolters received the first ICS appointment as Senior Member in history of philosophy.

The current faculty includes: Lambert Zuidervaart (Philosophy), Robert Sweetman (History of Philosophy), Shannon Hoff (Social and Political Philosophy), Ronald A. Kuipers (Philosophy of Religion), Doug Blomberg (Philosophy of Education), Nicholas John Ansell (Theology), and Rebekah Smick (Philosophy of Arts and Culture).