The gospel. Which is the most important thing any child could ever learn from any parent. Of all the titanic evangelical battles my father participated in, whether it was over the ordination of women in the early 70s, the inerrancy of Scripture soon afterwords, gender neutral Bible translations as the 20th century drew to a close, none was of greater import, nor a deeper passion of his than the battle over the gospel sparked by Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994 or the sundry iterations that followed on its heels.
My father’s doctoral studies came under Dr. GC Berkouwer at the Free University of Amsterdam. Just before my father’s arrival as a student Dr. Berkouwer had served as a visiting scholar to the meetings we know as Vatican II. While in Rome he roomed with Hans Kung. His zeal for justification by faith alone was strengthened by his time at the council, and he brought that back to Amsterdam. I was blessed to attend the public meetings that brought forth the Cambridge Declaration and to sit in on countless conversations with its architects. I was blessed to do the whole of my seminary systematics classes with my father. I was blessed to have him lead my own doctoral studies, which were, not coincidentally, heavy in reading Berkouwer.
None of which begins to explain why I answer the way I have. For all the blessings that came to me being at my father’s feet as a student, they are nothing compared to being as his feet as a son. What my father believed and taught as an academic was sound, biblical and important. What he passed on to me as a father, however, was sound, biblical and life shaping. He taught me not just that men are totally depraved, but that I am a sinner. He taught me not just that Jesus died for our sins, but that He died for us, sinners. He taught me that I am not only forgiven, but adopted and loved. This he taught by forgiving me and loving me.
In my book, Growing Up (with) RC I recount the last “conversation” I had with him. He was in the coma he would not come out of. I told him a secret, the real reason I have always so desperately wanted him to be proud of me. It wasn’t so he would feel good about me, but that he would feel good about himself, that he would know what a wonderful father he was. He lost his father when he was just 17. When I turned 17 it seemed like he lost all confidence in himself as a father, not having his father’s example to follow. I told him how sad I was that he was going home while I was under a cloud of shame. But I reminded him that his calling as a father wasn’t to help me be a great man, but to point me to the one Great Man. Though the world and that which is of the world might tsk, tsk when I come to mind, while some think I’m the apple that, falling from the tree, swirled away in a hurricane only to land in another hemisphere he was a success because in my failures I knew to Whom I must turn. He taught me that the only comfort in my life and in his death is Jesus Christ. That’s the gospel he taught me, the one that for all its complexity comes down to “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”