In Memoriam G. Van Dooren as Homiletician and Preacher - by Dr. J. De Jong
From
The 1996 Year Book Canadian and American Reformed Churches
Now
that the Lord has taken home our beloved teacher Rev. Gilbert Van Dooren after
a full and active life in the service of the Master, we might offer some preliminary
thoughts concerning the significance of his work. It is impossible for us
to fully measure or understand his role or significance for the life of the
Canadian Reformed churches. He worked hard as preacher, teacher and writer
to lay the ground work for the future, not only in doctrinal, but also in
liturgical and pastoral matters. Let me briefly focus on his work as the first
lecturer in the diaconiological disciplines at the Theological College.
He seized
this task with a new sense of joy and enthusiasm. And, as he once told me,
he found the years of lecturing at Hamilton some of the best of his life.
In his work at the College he was occupied with matters that concerned his
very life: preaching, pastoral work, and the concerns of the life of God's
congregation. And one must admire his feat! He took on this added task along
with maintaining a busy pastorate in a large urban congregation.
Without
any attempt at being complete, one can trace three major aspects or trends
in Van Dooren's work as lecturer in Hamilton. One notices first of all the
sustained connection to his first teacher in homiletics, Prof. T. Hoekstra.
However, one also notices the impact of K. Schilder, which fundamentally altered
his perspective on the sermon and how it must be preached. A final cardinal
influence was the doctrinal dispute leading to the Liberation. All of these
influences exhibit an ascending line: in the rich diversity of God's revelation,
the preacher must boldly proclaim and apply the certainty of God's promises
to the gathered congregation.
The
Influence of Hoekstra
Van Dooren
referred to Prof. T. Hoekstra as "the man who taught us how to preach."
The foundation& instruction of Hoekstra never left Van Dooren, either
as preacher, or as homiletician. In opposition to the aesthetically inclined
and subjectivist tendencies of Schieiermacher as well as to the new so called
"word theology' of Karl Barth, Hoekstra defined the sermon as the explication
and application of the Word of God. A preacher explains and applies the Word
of God. He does not just repeat it, neither does he reformulate it to suit
the perceived needs of his own hearers . The Word rules both the form and
content of the preacher's primary activity!
In tackling
this definition, Van Dooren certainly did not reject it. He did say that in
itself it was incomplete, and hence no longer acceptable Yet VanDooren's approach
was to expand or fill out this definition with further aspects of the sermon
that were in his view essential to it. He stressed two aspects that are of
fundamental significance from the point of view of the preacher, proclamation
and appropriation.(1)
Perhaps
the single most telling sign of Hoekstra's influence can be seen in Van Dooren's
attention to the craft or technique in building the sermon. He insisted on
a rigorous structure, and he always sought to hold to it himself. For Van
Dooren the idea of structure meant that the sermon must have a theme and division,
and a "pyramid" structure. These structural principles must be applied
according to all the rules of formal homiletics: balance, coordination, simplicity,
and clarity - to mention only a few. Hoekstra may even have over-accentuated
this element, because for him material homiletics was not based on divisions
taken from Scripture but from the effect sermons were designed to have on
the hearer. Hoekstra divided the material or subject matter of preaching in
three categories according to the styles or effects of the addresses: didactic,
proptreptic, or empoetic material.(2) Here formal considerations dominate the division of the material.
While Van Dooren broke with this approach, he maintained the abiding importance
of Hoekstra's attention to the formal aspects of the sermon. A plan, an outline
and a clearly marked structure are essential ingredients to the sermon which
not only serve to discipline the preacher in preparing, but also to assist
the congregation in following it.
This 'Is
not to say that Van Dooren saw the sermon as a rigid, formal address. The
text for him was a living reality, and as he was used to saying, the preacher
must "crawl into the skin of his text." He urged his students to
"talk with the text, and let the text talk to you." He warned them
not to bring dogmatics to the text, but to let the text illumine the dogma.
The sermon had to be a living reality, a well-crafted but at the same time
living and engaging address to the congregation.
The
impact of K. Schilder
Another
person who radically influenced Van Dooren's perception on preaching and the
life of the congregation was K. Schilder. Schilder Pioneered the redemptivehistorical
method Of Preaching, and uncovered the Principles and perspectives
regarding the way historical material in particular had to be preached.(3) Schiider gave new attention to the date and circumstances of an event, and urged preachers to develop a theocentric perspective on
the events to be preached in relation to the whole plan and work of God in
Jesus Christ. For Schilder, the Bible was a unity, and therefore each point
on the historical line represented a part of the whole. His rule simply Put
was: fight. up the part in the fight of the whole.
These
initial guidelines to a new approach to historical material led to a resurgence
of the preaching of the Old Testament. in time there arose a whole group of
ministers and students who began to uncover and articulate principles of interpretation
and preaching in relation to historical material in Scripture. The leading
ministers were Rev. E.T. Van den Born, Rev. M.B. Van't Veer, Rev. D. Van Dijk
and 1. De Wolff. In many respects the redemptive-historical approach, as it
came to be called, was a return to the Calvin's interpretive principles with
regard to Old Testament passages. What some saw as a new method was in essence
a return to the older principles of interpretation as they were postulated
by Calvin and other early Reformers.
Van Dooren
not only immersed himself in this new method of preaching, but made his own
contribution to its development. Critics took it as a schematic and objective
form of preaching rather early on in its development. Van Dooren was particularly
sensitive to this criticism, but at the same time he did not want to abandon
the method because of it. Rather, he looked for ways in which the method could
be expanded and improved. To fine tune the method, he pleaded for greater
attention to special canonics in the construction of the sermon . (4) This is roughly similar to what other homileticians have called:
the purpose of the text. As Van Dooren stressed, one must always keep in mind
not only the time of the events, but also the perspective of the author, and
the purpose or intent governing the structure of the book. This is essential
for applying the text to the hearer.
At the
same time Van Dooren was critical of the more recent attempts by other homileticians
to weaken or undercut the essential principles of the redemptive- historical
method. Returning to the subject in 1989, ten years after his first speech
on redemptive-historical preaching at a Ministers' Workshop, one notices a
consistent line: the method must be maintained, but improved and adapted according
to the needs of the congregation.(5) He was open to make the necessary modifications to the method to ensure that
the text is truly opened and applied to the hearer in the pew. But the central
rule had to be maintained: preach the historical events as the wonderful surprise
of God's salvation work.(6)
The
Effect of the Liberation
Van Dooren
went through the entire struggle of the Liberation as a preacher. In the doctrinal
controversies he sensed that the pulpit was threatened, and that the effectiveness
of the sermon was at stake. For him the doctrinal decisions declared binding
by the Synod of Utrecht in 1943 essentially formed an attack on the pulpit.
His opposition to the imposed binding of the decisions was not theoretical
or doctrinal, but the opposition of a preacher caught in the existential struggle
of having to preach the word of God to those who were battling with fear and
loss, along with uncertainty and doubt.(7)
In the
measure that the ecclesiastical authorities tried to eliminate this preaching,
the sense of certainty and the conviction of the truth of the older secessionist
stand on the covenant grew in Van Dooren's thinking and preaching more and
more. Here, redemptive-historical preaching became for him more and more: covenantal preaching . All sequence, order and structure in the magnalia dei pointed him increasingly to the unfailing certainty of the promises
of God.
The
Liturge
Next to
the preaching of the word which was his primary area of concern,
Van Dooren gave a great deal of attention to the development
and growth of
the church's
liturgy. He showed how the Reformed liturgy was rooted in the Word of God,
and how it too had to be approached in a redemptive-historical way. We
live as a New Testament congregation with the liturgy of the age
of fulfilment. We live under an open heaven, or, as he liked to say, the time
in which the Old Testament temple has been turned on end. The holy of holiest
is now in heaven where Christ is seated at God's right hand.(8) And we may be living participants in the chorus of praise surrounding
his heavenly throne!
Evangelistics!
Van Dooren
also expended a great deal of effort to encourage and promote congregational
evangelism. Evangelistics is a relatively young discipline in the family of
theological sciences, partly because the opportunities for conscious and combined
activity has not always been present in the church's history. Van Dooren worked
hard to give a sense of order and structure to this discipline, and to encourage
churches to initiate programs that would assist in the goal and duty of the
church to "win the neighbour for Christ."
In this
area, as a pastor and teacher he did much to put theory into practice. He
was an active participant in the early organizational meetings for congregational
evangelism held in. Burlington in the early seventies. He was intensely fearful
of a growing introversion in the churches, and as he put it, he felt called
by the Lord to lead "our beloved churches out of the shelter." The
growth of organized evangelism activities in our churches can be attributed
for a good part to his influence and leadership in the early years of our
church life.
A
Churchman
Much more
could be said about Van Dooren's rote as the first lecturer in diaconiology
in Hamilton. The churches now have a whole group of ministers that received
their training in these subjects from him. They all have their own story to
tell. And. over the years, 1 think we will notice Van Dooren's impact more
and more. As Dr. Van Dam said in his funeral address, Van Dooren was a "church
man," a man of the church, an officebearer who carried the church on
his heart. Every preacher today who was a student of his does well to hold
to the instruction he laid down and follow the example that he set.
J. De
Jong
(1) Without going into the problematics here, it can be stated that in general "appropriation"
follows the "application" of the Word; however, for the preacher these
two factors coalesce. Hence the addition of the term in the definition makes
sense. The sermon does not include appropriation, but must be designed to foster
it. It is then essential that the text is appropriated by the preacher before
the sermon is written.
(2) This follows the division of classical rhetoric, in which the goal of the
address is to teach (docere) to move (movere) and to affect (delectare) the
heater. Augustine also divided the material this way.
(3) 'We include here the gospels, which can be seen
as parallel to the historical material in the Old Testament.
(4) See his paper "In Many and Various Ways. The
Significance of Special Canonics for Preaching" Koinonia Vol.
1), 112, (1979) 1-30
(5) "Redemptive-Historical versus Exemplaristic
Preaching. Where Do We Go From Here?" Koinonia, Vol. 12 #1 (1990)
1-22
(6) One of his more well-known sermons was on Deuteronomy 29:29. Contrary to what
so many
preachers (and members!) in his day had made of it, Van Dooren insisted that the text
does not deal with election or the "hidden things." it deals with
what is about to be revealed! - what he called "the history of
God's surprises." For the key point in Deuteronomy 29 is:
be ready for what comes next.
Now
that the Lord has taken home our beloved teacher Rev. Gilbert Van Dooren after
a full and active life in the service of the Master, we might offer some preliminary
thoughts concerning the significance of his work. It is impossible for us
to fully measure or understand his role or significance for the life of the
Canadian Reformed churches. He worked hard as preacher, teacher and writer
to lay the ground work for the future, not only in doctrinal, but also in
liturgical and pastoral matters. Let me briefly focus on his work as the first
lecturer in the diaconiological disciplines at the Theological College.