Pieter Vos

Bio: Pieter Vos is an academic researcher from Protestant Theological University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Natural law & Morality. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 13 publications receiving 65 citations.

Learning from exemplars: emulation, character formation and the complexities of ordinary life

Abstract: In the field of character education role-modelling is advocated as an important pedagogical strategy. It is supposed that students learn from ‘significant others’ who exemplify important virtues an...

Beyond individualisation: neo-evangelical lessons for religious socialisation

Abstract: Young Christians may be less individualised than some widely shared reflections in the literature suggest. Even though their faith may no longer be exclusively or primarily nourished in the traditional institutional contexts of family, school and church, they often prefer their faith being lived and expressed in new forms of sociality such as festivals and virtual communities. The authors describe one particular current in contemporary Christianity in which such tribal forms of sociality are rampant, namely neo-evangelicalism. They argue that socialisation actually takes place in these seemingly individualised forms of sociality, yet less explicitly than in traditional forms. Furthermore, they explore the lessons that may be learned from the tribal forms of sociality that characterise neo-evangelicalism for religious socialisation in the contexts of church and school.

A Distinctive of Christian Higher Education: Educating for Vocation

Abstract: Bram de Muynck, Pieter Vos, Jan Hoogland, and Jan Van der Stoep Driestar Christian University, Gouda, The Netherlands; Theological University Apeldoorn, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands; Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands; Viaa, University of Applied Sciences, Zwolle, The Netherlands; VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences, Ede, The Netherlands

The Relative Good of Work: Reconsidering Vocation Eschatologically

Abstract: Vocation, interpreted as the calling of every individual believer to serve God in ordinary life, has been an important feature of Protestantism. However, not only has the notion of vocation gradually disappeared from the late modern understanding of work and profession, the identification of vocation and work has also been criticized by theologians such as Karl Barth, Miroslav Volf, Jacques Ellul, and Gerrit de Kruijf. From their eschatological perspective, these theologians hold that because our true vocation is to be citizens of God's kingdom, work is a relative good or even a necessary evil. Although this criticism is in various respects justified and relevant, it tends to overlook the particularity of callings included in the Protestant conception of vocation. Therefore, an alternative approach is presented, in which vocation as a particular calling from God's side can be reconnected to everyday life, including the life sphere of work and profession. From this approach, this article explores t...

Calvinists among the Virtues: Reformed Theological Contributions to Contemporary Virtue Ethics

Abstract: Since virtue and the virtues have been important in Reformed theology for most of its history, this essay is devoted to the question of how this tradition may contribute to and interact with contemporary virtue ethics (MacIntyre, Hauerwas). Reformed concepts of sanctification as open to moral growth, covenant as a narrative context of divine commandments, and unio cum Christo as defining human teleology and virtuousness provide valuable contributions to the development of such an ethics. On the other hand, Reformed conceptions of (social) reform, natural law, common grace (Calvin) and christological eschatology (Barth) offer theological arguments for overcoming Hauerwas’s problematic overemphasis on the distinctiveness of the church’s ethic.

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

Abstract: Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).