Recently, two exciting ILSE research projects started, on ‘technology’ and on ‘hope.’ For this projects several doctoral researchers have been appointed and you are one of them, conducting research on hope. Could you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?
My name is Ben Wiskerke, 31 years old, I live in The Netherlands with my wife Naomi and 9 months old son Bram. Most of my life I lived in Kampen, where I also studied Theology and where I also met my wife. Recently we moved to a small village, Hollandscheveld in the province of Drenthe, where my wife has become the pastor of one of the protestant churches (PKN). After my Bachelors degree at the Theological University of Kampen I did the one year Master’s Theology (General), specializing in what they called Identity, Ethics and Society. There I was confronted with all kinds of questions arising in the context of Christians in society today. And Christian tradition provided questions of their own to us, but also provided some possible answers. Studying Theology I learned to reflect on those questions and answers about how a faithful life as a Christian in different parts of our lives could look like.
What drew you to pursue research in theology? Was there a particular moment or experience that inspired this path?
As a child I always wanted to become a pastor, but in my teenage years that ambition was slowly going away. Still, I was interested in theological topics and learning about the Bible. But besides that, I was always busy with my own small “research projects.” And that could be about very different things: about foreign languages, geography, history, natural sciences. You could call it a “problem” that I liked a lot of different topics at school. It made it difficult to choose what to study. And I wanted to study something meaningful, a desire many young people can recognize today. I thought to myself what I thought was the most important thing in my life, and I concluded it was my faith in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And part of the appeal of doing Theology to me was the great variety that it has to offer, the languages of the Bible, the systematic theology, but also practical theology. I felt that theology is essentially not only about learning about how to think about who God is, but it is also about the whole of life, in all its facets. I wanted to explore that great treasure, all those centuries of Christian thought. That’s what drew me the most, I think.
What is your research about, can you share a bit of what you’re busy with?
My research is about hope. Hope is a word that immediately calls to mind all kinds of ideas and feelings. That’s one interesting part of it. Ask people about hope and they will give different answers about it. For some people hope is the reason they get out of bed every day and live life. But to others hope is something passive. One must not simply hope, one must look ahead towards and act accordingly. So what is hope?
Last august I started researching hope in times of crisis, among farmers. It will be a qualitative, empirical research. But to research how farmers experience hope in troublesome times, you must clearly first have an idea of what hope is, or can be, what people mean by hope, where it comes from, what the effects can be. So that’s what I am currently doing is making sense of what has been written up till now about hope. It’s not a goal to tell exactly what is hope, but it is a way to navigate the different concepts of hope people may (unknowingly or not) have made their own.
Who are some of the theologians or thinkers that have influenced you the most so far, and why?
Bonhoeffer. In studying his works you can find systematic theology, ethics and spirituality integrated and knowing the story of his life obviously deepens the meaning and impact of his work. He is an example of a theologian who was attentive to the concrete situation around him and responded theologically to that, which is always a daring endeavor. Furthermore, I have been influenced by Oliver O’Donovan. For my Master’s thesis I studied some of his works, such as Desire of the Nations, to make sense of cultural Christianity and how to reflect theologically on it. I was struck by the careful way he crafts this political theology, with Bible exegesis as an important part of it. I grew up in a Neo-Calvinist tradition and one of the theologians associated with that is Herman Bavinck. Reading him it struck me how he combined theological depth with piety. Practicing theology, or talking about theological subjects, combined with a pious attitude, can often end with a doxology about the greatness of God, or a silence in which the mystery of the gospel is profoundly felt.
How do you hope your research might contribute to or impact the field of theology or society in general?
My hope for this research is that we begin to understand how hope can function in the midst of a crisis, and how different types or dimensions of hope play a role in that, especially in the field of agriculture because there it seems that hope is often focused on technological advancement as a solution. However, that seems to be only one dimension of hope. And maybe it will show us that the approaches taken to tackle these different crises, such as the climate crisis or the nitrogen crisis in agriculture, can use some of the insights given by this study of the concrete experiences of hope.
