Volume 49 Number 4 Article 6
June 2021
Scriptural Re=ections on History (Book Review) Scriptural Re=ections on History (Book Review)
Keith C. Sewell
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege
Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Higher Education Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Sewell, Keith C. (2021) "Scriptural Re=ections on History (Book Review),"
Pro Rege
: Vol. 49: No. 4, 37 - 38.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol49/iss4/6
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at Dordt Digital
Collections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pro Rege by an authorized administrator of Dordt Digital
Collections. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Pro Rege—June 2021 37
Zeeland or Whitinsville, all of which are cut from the
same ethno-religious fabric.
So, ironically, one of the problems I have been
talking about in her memoir is an immense attribute:
by talking about it, I can’t help but feel as if I’m talk-
ing behind her back. She prompts guilt by evoking
scenes so rich within my own memory that I know it
all, chapter-and-verse.
At the bottom of the story, two deep and dicult
concerns eventually emerge. First, mental illness. Much
of the memoir arises from a story Grioen didn’t grow
up with, even though she did, a story of her mother’s
girlhood horror and humiliation, a story which hap-
pened long before Grioen herself was born.
But the shame her mother suered—humilia-
tion at the hands of a family and a community that
simply repressed the story, locked it up behind locked
doors, acted as if it hadn’t happened—is the real vil-
lainy. What happened to her mother put her mother,
her sister, and herself into Pine Rest (and that too is
an “in”—into a mental hospital) at dierent times in
their individual lives.
But Grioen doesn’t stop there. Why are there
stories that really can’t be spoken of in this peculiar
tightly knit community? What she wants to an-
swer—and she does—is that we all would rather not
mention them, given that we (of the old-line Dutch
Reformed cultural and theological ethos) don’t want
to blame a sovereign God we extol as a great lover and
Creator of Heaven and Earth.
Shame, Lewis Smedes says in Shame and Grace:
Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve, is the dark side
of “family values.” It’s the blessed curse of a deeply
caring family and community.
Some say Calvinism rests on two signicant pil-
lars—the sovereignty of God and the depravity of
man. at dynamic duo is at the heart of things in
the life and the story of Jane Grioen.London Street
is something of a rarity, a memoir that is maybe all
about theological doctrine.
Which is not to say she rejects the doctrine or the
man who dispenses it. Her father, who, late in life,
wanders back into the Protestant Reformed Church of
his youth (that’s an “in” too), is the source of that over-
powering theology, the theology at times you can’t help
thinking she would like to blame for the tonnage of
emotional problems that’s there in her own story.
But she can’t. ere’s still something there in
him she won’t forsake—and, oddly enough, it’s love.
Speaking of her father, she says, “He might be a pris-
oner to his theology, but he hadn’t locked his heart
away.” e source of terrifying dogma that threatens
to lock up the family in its own theological icebox is
her father, a man who has literally given his life—held
down two jobs for as long as she can remember—for
the sake of a family he has always loved hugely, and a
wife who had a child before he married her.
It would be nice if we could nail down the true
villainy in all of this, but Jane Grioen can’t do it,
and neither can we, not with the kind of exactness
some readers might delight in discovering. Puzzle
pieces are missing from this memoir, but then often
enough they’re missing from our own puzzles too.
at’s life. Even for the Dutch Reformed.
Scriptural Reflections on History. K. J. Popma. Translated and edited by Harry Van Dyke.
Aalten. The Netherlands: Wordbridge Publishing, 2020. ISBN: 978-90-76660-57-8, x + 142
pp. Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell, Emeritus Professor of History, Dordt University.
Addressing the American Historical Association
in 1951, E. Harris Harbison spoke of the rise of an
Augustinian-style interest in the meaning of history.
He was right. Beginning in the 1930s, and deepening
in the 1940s and early 1950s, a highly diverse range
of Christians oered their thoughts on the subject,
including Herbert Wood (1934), L. E. Elliott-Binns
(1943), Oscar Cullmann (1945), Emil Brunner
(1947), Eric Rust (1947), Herbert Buttereld (1948/9),
Karl Löwith (1949), Eric Preiss (1949/50), C. S.
Lewis (1950), Jean Danielou (1950), and Christopher
Dawson (1951). It is hard not to conclude that the
deepening crisis of the 1930s, the Second World War,
and the coming of the Cold War had a great deal to
do with this development.
Scriptural Reections on History, now published for
the rst time in English, was part of this movement.
It originally appeared as Calvinistische geschiedenis-
beschouwing in 1945 and was published by Wever of
Franeker. Its author was Klaas J. Popma (1903-86), a
classical scholar who was among those inuenced by
the philosophical work of Dirk H. . Vollenhoven
(1892-1978) and Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977).
Many Reformed people in the Netherlands knew of
him for his seven-volume work on the Heidelberg
Catechism, Levensbeschouwing (1958-65), while
English-language readers may know his A Battle for
Righteousness: e Message of the Book of Job (1998).
38 Pro Rege—June 2021
is so misleading. He also considers the question of the
eventual end of procreation and the character of the
“better country” already desired by God’s covenant
people in the present era. Popma stresses the continu-
ities between the present and that which is to come.
e eternal life that we have in Christ has already be-
gun and orients us, also historically, toward the con-
summation of all things.
is is a relatively short book, but it will not be
an “easy read” for all readers. Popma at times employs
an elliptical style, sometimes circling his point for a
while before nally making it. Nevertheless, this is
a rich and suggestive discussion. Popma’s handling
of one Bible passage after another drives readers to
deepen their understanding of history even as they
ponder the relevant texts. is process can be two-
way. For example, Popma’s discussion of the Book of
Ecclesiastes deepens not only our insight into history
but also our understanding of the book itself (31-40,
55-8).
is question remains: Why is biblically directed
historical understanding so weak among contempo-
rary Christians? Popma provides us with insights with
which to answer this question. Among the relevant
considerations are the widespread Christian igno-
rance of the Old Testament (65) and the inuence of
scholasticism. e latter seeks to formulate a seeming-
ly supra-historical static system. Against such views,
Popma insists that “[t]here is probably no ercer foe
of Calvinist thought about history than the scholastic
attitude” (68). In the opinion of the reviewer, he is
right. Indeed, it may be argued that the outlook of
the biblical writers is repeatedly redemptive-historical
rather than theo-logical.
With the spirit of revolution sweeping across the
United States and the English-speaking world gen-
erally, with demands to recast—or even erase—na-
tional and socio-economic histories, the time is more
than ripe for a renewal of Christian reection on the
meaning of history. e publication of this English
language translation is an important and most wel-
come contribution to this end.
Popma wrote this book in the earlier 1940s, dur-
ing the dark and perilous days of the German occupa-
tion of the Netherlands. It is therefore hardly surpris-
ing that he made no direct reference to contemporary
events. He prefers the occasional classical example.
Popma’s purpose was to explore and describe in out-
line the message of the Bible as it instructs, deepens,
and directs our understanding of human history
generally. Accordingly, Popma stays close to the bib-
lical texts. He does not tell us how to interpret, in
a Scriptural way, the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire or the French Revolution. Rather, he sets
forth the biblical foundations for historical research
and thinking. To this end, Popma describes a wide
arc from creation to new creation. He achieves this
purpose with a series of overviews on the unity, struc-
ture, and course of history (5-69), then transitions
to discussions addressing historical research and our
sense of history—including the mighty forces at work
in history (71-104)—and concludes with some reec-
tions on time and eternity (105-131).
e entire discussion is grounded in the order of
creation. e Scriptures know of chaos only as a fall-
ing away from the God-given order. Our calling as
human beings is to serve our creator forever. At the
same time, the God-given unity of history is frac-
tured, but never actually destroyed, by human sin
and its consequences. All humanity and all history
are involved; no one stands outside of human his-
tory. Moreover, after all the havoc and destruction
brought about by sin, the unity of human history is
rearmed by the gospel. at is apparent in Acts 14
and 17. Where human history-making is misdirected
and misshapen by sin, its apparent achievements are
subject to withering and eventual collapse. Only that
which is in Christ endures forever.
From discussing “historical roots and forces,”
Popma transitions to his concluding discussion of
“time and eternity.” Here he repeatedly instructs and
claries. For example, he addresses the question of the
correct understanding of Rev. 10:6, where the KJV
translation—“that there should be time no longer”—
