ETF Leuven Opens Academic Year with Education on Campus
Evangelische Theologische Faculteit in Leuven today opened academic year 2020-2021 with 62 new students. Residential education starts again with physical classes. With its experience in distance learning, the faculty can easily switch when tightened coronary measures demand it.
The ETF Leuven currently has 22 new registrations for a program at the bachelor level, 40 at the master level and 10 for the doctoral program. Not all (re)enrolments are complete yet, but the numbers are stable. The student total for 2020-2021 is estimated at a minimum of 225. Remarkable is the increase in the number of international master and doctoral students.
Eye for the fatigue of children
In his opening speech, Rector Prof. Dr. Jos de Kock referred to the fatigue in educational institutions caused by the intensive second half of last year. He called us to keep our eyes open in spite of fatigue and to put our hands resolutely in service of children and young people: the children in our own society who have missed connection, space, opportunities and sometimes even safety, but also children on the run who have a difficult past and miss a future perspective. “Theology can contribute to finding wisdom to serve as a human being, as a community of faith and as a society in the encounter with vulnerability and injustice around us,” according to de Kock.
Farewell speech Prof. Dr. Jan Hoek
With the lecture “God is goed. Theologie als doxologie” Prof. Dr. Jan Hoek will bid farewell to the ETF Leuven today. He spoke about the meaning of the statement ‘God is good’ in the doxological psalm 92 in which life with the good God turns out to be a disputed life. It is only from a constantly renewed view of God that the future opens up for the pilgrim. According to Hoek, current dogmatic reflection on the goodness of God needs on the one hand to differentiate this confession from neo-Marcion tendencies, and on the other, to avoid abstract, impersonal thinking about an omnipotent, yet faceless or heartless God.
Dean Prof. Dr. Andreas Beck: “We are very grateful to colleague Hoek for his faithful dedication over the past seventeen years. Not only did he present a great number of lectures in dogmatics at the Bachelor’s and also the Master’s levels, but he was also involved in our research programs. For example, he supervised two PhD students who now both teach in university higher education. He was also a member of the General Assembly, the highest body of the ETF Leuven, for over 8 years.”
About Prof. Dr. Jan Hoek
Jan Hoek (1950) has been associated with ETF Leuven since 2004 as a part-time guest professor of Systematic Theology.
He studied theology in Leiden and served two congregations of the then Dutch Reformed Church as pastor. In 1981 he obtained his doctorate in Leiden with a dissertation on Daniel Colonius, a theologian of the 16th and 17th centuries. In his career he has taught dogmatics at the Christian University of Applied Sciences (CHE) as Special Professor of Reformed Spirituality at the Theological University Kampen (Oudestraat) and then the Protestant Theological University (Groningen location). Since 2001 he has been a member of the editorial board of the journal Theologia Reformata. He has published numerous publications in the fields of dogmatics, ethics, church building, homiletics and spirituality.
