H. Evan Runner

A prophet is God-possessed, is possessed by the Spirit of prophecy, as John, the author of the last Bible book, was “in the Spirit” (Revelation 1:10) when he received his revelation.

When at the beginning of the summer vacation Prof. Radius called me on the telephone to ask if I would prepare something for this faculty-Board Conference, on the subject of the Christian’s relation to the world.

In our own country, we are hearing a great deal about the tension that is frequently thought to be felt between states’ rights and human rights, and between existing civil rights and human rights. These are polar tensions that arise from the peculiarly humanistic way of thinking.

The discussion of human existence in terms of human rights has been very much in the foreground of our life since the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and in the political and socio-economic revolutions that have characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It is not surprising that Christian young people experience under these conditions of upheaval a heightened awareness of the root question: What is human life and how is it to be lived?

In these conferences we are experiencing a recovery of the Word of God in its integral meaning as directing Principle of our whole life, of our ‘walk’ in life, that is of our life-dynamics.

This book contains the lectures which Dr. H. Evan Runner presented to two student conferences in 1959 and 1960. Runner was professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 1951 until 1981, when he became professor of philosophy emeritus.