150 Years of Reformed Theology at Calvin Seminary

Calvin Theological Seminary (CTS) has held a series of special events over the past several months to celebrate its founding 150 years ago in a Christian elementary school on Williams Street in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Calvin University also traces its beginning back to March of 1876, when classes began with one teacher and seven students in an upstairs classroom of the school.

Given the significance of the seminary and university to the life of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, this has been a rich time in which these institutions have considered where they have been, where they are now, and where they are going.

Lectures, worship services, special gatherings, podcasts—and later this year the publication of a pair of books—have all been created to highlight this significant milestone.

An academic lecture titled “Continuity and Change at Calvin Theological Seminary” and presented in the seminary auditorium on Sept. 26, 2025, helped to launch the months-long anniversary celebration.

Jul Medenblik, president of the seminary, opened that lecture by providing an overview of why it was important to honor the 150th anniversary.

“Even as we come to the 150th year to celebrate God’s faithfulness, we do want to look at the 151st year and beyond,” said Medenblik. “I’m grateful for our panelists who will be looking at the past so that we may look forward and be able to learn together.”

The first of three panelists to speak was Karen Maag, director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies. In her lecture, she spoke about the early days of education for Protestant pastors.

Maag discussed the dawn of the Reformation and the widespread need to train pastors. Early on, given the shortage of candidates to serve churches, congregations sought to hire former Roman Catholic priests, but that didn’t serve the denomination’s needs.

As a result, said Maag, the need arose to train men with little or no background in ministry. And among the challenges these students faced was the cost of paying for their education. 

Having to preach without use of a sound system was also a problem, Maag explained: “We have humorous letters from this time. Churches wrote that they heard a candidate was very knowledgeable in Greek and Hebrew, which was wonderful, but could they make themselves heard?” The need to project was among the standard expectations.

Another panelist was Will Katerberg, curator of the CRCNA archives, who discussed, among other things, how World War II affected the outlook of CRC men who served in the military. “This was a generation who grew more worldly wise,” he said. “During their years of service, many men experienced the world not just beyond the CRC’s borders” but also beyond their nation’s borders.

Ronald Feenstra, a longtime seminary administrator and professor of systematic theology, finished up by talking about the seminary’s approach to educating pastors over the past 50 years. He described the Athens and Berlin models of seminary education. The Athens model, he said, dates from antiquity and focuses on the spiritual and moral formation of students. The Berlin model, which came into being in 1810, emphasized research and academic rigor as well as teaching practical skills of ministry.

“In the past 50 years, Calvin Seminary has lived somewhere between the Athens and Berlin models,” he said. “Here at the seminary we teach the skills you need to be a pastor, but we also emphasize a love for God and cultivation of virtues that students can take into their lives as well.”

Another academic lecture took place in April and focused on teaching the Bible to seminary students.

“Study of the Bible has been central, and must remain central, to Calvin Theological Seminary for the next 150 years,” said Wilson de Angelo Cunha, head of the seminary’s Bible department. “We must keep Scripture as the clear lens through which we see God, ourselves, and the world.”

Gabriela Tijerina-Pike, director of Latino ministries and associate professor of New Testament at CTS, spoke at this lecture presentation as well. She said the goal of CTS faculty has been and must continue to be training students “to be able to confess and profess their love for our God through the diligent study of the Scriptures.”

Wrapping up that event, Dan Daley, a CTS assistant professor of New Testament, brought up artificial intelligence and warned how it can make study and research too easy. “AI tools are out there, and we can look up everything in a matter of moments,” he said. “But we will lose out if we let AI do all of the hard, interpretative work for us.” 

Several anniversary presentations and events took place during the last week of March as well. Kicking off those festivities was a panel discussion on Neo-Calvinism.

Neo-Calvinism is a branch of Calvinism, which itself goes back to the 16th-century Reformation. Its chief proponent was John Calvin, who taught the absolute sovereignty of God, the supreme authority of the Bible, and the foundational understanding that salvation is an unwarranted gift from God.

Neo-Calvinism, a movement that began in the late 19th century, found ways to apply Calvinism more broadly to all aspects of life. 

The panel on Neo-Calvinism featured reflections from scholars who serve churches or social justice and arts organizations or teach at universities in North America and beyond. Cory Willson, a CTS professor of missiology, led the panel and asked each participant to describe ways in which Neo-Calvinism plays out in their work.

One panelist described how Neo-Calvinism helps to guide the work she does with congressional staffers on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Another panelist talked about a ministry he has undertaken by sharing the gospel with college students who spend much of their time playing video games.

Another panelist discussed how Neo-Calvinism helps to undergird the commitment of friends she knows who worship in an underground church in China.Yet another panelist spoke of fostering closer relationships between Christians and Muslims. A pastor from Scotland on this panel highlighted being able to speak about and model his faith daily in a culture in which only four percent of the people attend church.

Robert Covoto, a theologian residing in Los Angeles, Calif., summed up his work this way: “I believe that God gives gifts indiscriminately to all kinds of people. I try to help people see the work they do, the areas in which they might have specific gifts, as being their mission field.”

Adding to perspectives on Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism was a podcast in which Karen Maag and Ronald Feenstra discussed one of the books being published as part of the 150th-anniversary activities. This is a book containing essays by CTS faculty on what it means to be Reformed.

“The Reformed perspective is something that pulls us together across boundaries and helps to give us a sense of the broader church,” said Maag.

Feenstra added that being Reformed is basically Christianity as it emerged in the early church. “But we also have an accent, a certain thesis, certain ways we identify ourselves,” he said. “We tend to emphasize the sovereignty of God and put a little more weight on it. Reformed Christianity also tends to talk even more than others about the depths of human sin.”

A special seminary chapel service, Dies Natalis (meaning “birthday”), took place on March 25. In his sermon during that service, Dave Beelen, the seminary’s director of vocational formation, drew lessons on perseverance and intimacy from Genesis 32, where we read of Jacob wrestling throughout the night with God.

Just as God grappled with Jacob on that long-ago night, said Beelen to the chapel full of students, “God will wrestle for your hearts here at Calvin Seminary.” 

Capping the week of anniversary events was a special worship service held in the Calvin University Covenant Fine Arts Center on March 29, Palm Sunday. Filled with well-choreographed and deftly performed songs of praise, the service included an uplifting message from Mary Hulst, the university’s campus pastor.

“For 150 years here at Calvin, we have practiced hope, which is not a feeling but a virtue,” she said. “When we had one professor and seven students and a teeny, tiny budget, we practiced hope.”

And down through decades of war, disease, assassinations, protests, and battles within churches, said Hulst, “we have practiced hope.” 

Gesturing with a hand to the crowd, Hulst went on: “And look at what we are doing right here, right now.”

Hulst gazed hard at the audience and continued: “Today we have sung the great old songs. We have been telling the great old stories. We have remembered the greatest truth, the deepest promises. These are the things that echo deep in our souls. These are the things that animated people 150 years ago, and they still animate us today.”