In Memoriam Sjouke Voolstra, 1942-2004
2005; Volume: 79; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0025-9373
Autores Tópico(s)Religion, Society, and Development
ResumoTHE MENNONITE QUARTERLY REVIEW regrets to announce the sudden death of Sjouke Voolstra of Landsmeer, The Netherlands, the leading scholar of Dutch Anabaptist-Mennonite history and theology. He died while sailing his boat Gratia near Enkhuizen on October 12, at the age of 62. He was married to Trynke Bottema, who gave birth to their two daughters, Gerbrich and Anna. Born on March 26, 1942, to a Mennonite family in a hamlet near Akkrum, Friesland, Voolstra attended the Openbaar Lyceum in Heerenveen. He subsequently enrolled in the University of Amsterdam, studying theology, and in the Amsterdam Mennonite Seminary for his pastoral training. Even before graduation Voolstra started his career as a pastor of a newly-founded ecumenical congregation in the province of Flevoland (1970-1972). He then served the Mennonite congregations of Goes, Middelburg and Vlissingen (1972-1978), Eindhoven (1978-1982) and Amsterdam (Singelkerk; 1982-1984). Along the way Voolstra completed his Ph.D. under I. B. Horst and J. A. Oosterbaan at the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation, Het woord is vlees geworden: de melchioritischmenniste incarnatieleer (Kampen, 1982), was a masterpiece of research that reappraised a previously neglected feature of Mennonite orthodoxy, the incarnation theology of Melchior Hoffman, the father of Dutch Anabaptism. In 1981, he was appointed as a part-time lecturer in Christian theology and ethics at the Mennonite Seminary, which in 1984 was extended into a full professorship in philosophy of religion and ethics at both the Seminary and the University of Amsterdam, as the successor of Oosterbaan. With Horst's retirement in 1988, he also became a full professor in Mennonitica (the history of Dutch Anabaptism-Mennonitism). From 1990 until 1995 Voolstra served as dean of the Mennonite Seminary. He took an early retirement from his seminary and university positions in 2004. Gifted with many talents and passionately devoted to the spiritual well-being of his Dutch fellowship, Voolstra acted simultaneously on many fronts: as an ordinary church member of his local congregation, as a skillful theologian and visionary church leader, and as a widely esteemed scholar of Anabaptist-Mennonite history. As a nationally-recognized theologian and church leader, Voolstra was an ardent promoter of a biblically-rooted Mennonitism, which had been rather oppressed since the days of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mennonite liberalism and latitudinarianism. In a great variety of popular articles, theological tracts and policy papers, as well as in his seminary classes and public lectures, he pleaded time and again for a confessional form of Mennonitism, characterized by a modern interpretation of the Gospel and historically inspired by the tireless work of Menno Simons. Voolstra, like Menno, took up the sword of the Word against postmodern and pseudoreligious Mennonitism, which had also been affected by secularization and individualism. To his frustration, however, positive responses to his visions and opinions became gradually overruled by growing opposition. He therefore could not hide undertones of skepticism and cynicism in his later pastoral writings. As a Mennonite historian, Sjouke Voolstra's reputation steadily grew over the years, although he modestly claimed to be primarily a theologian, who dealt with history as only a hobby. …
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