Donald Sinnema

professor of theology

on faculty since 1987

Phone: 708.239.4753
Fax: 708.597.5858
E-mail: don.sinnema@trnty.edu    

Education

Ph.D., St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 1985
M.Phil., Institute of Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario, 1975
B.A., Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, 1969

Professional and Personal Interests

God is sovereign and calls us to engage culture in a broken world. Every student of Donald Sinnema’s theology class knows that before graduating.
   
“My main goals in teaching theology are to help students develop a rich understanding of the full-orbed message of the whole Bible and to help them develop a biblical worldview that will guide a life of service in whatever area of society they are called to serve.”
   
Sinnema has served as professor of theology at Trinity since 1987. Before that he earned a master’s in philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada, and a Ph.D. in historical theology from St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto.
   
He recently published a book of pioneer letters from the earliest Dutch settlement in Alberta.
   
“My main areas of scholarship are Dutch immigration to North America and Post-Reformation studies.”
  
Sinnema lives in Blue Island, Illinois. He has three adult children and one grandson. He attends Grace Community Christian Reformed Church in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

Courses Taught

• Biblical Literature: the Epistles
• Biblical Literature: the Pentateuch
• History of Christianity
• Religion in America
• The Future in Biblical Perspective

Professional Society Membership

• Sixteenth Century Studies Conference
• Calvin Studies Society
• Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies

Papers Published and/or Presented

• “Theodore Beza’s View of Predestination in Historical Perspective,” in Théodore de Bèze: Réformateur et Homme de Lettres, Irena Backus, ed. Geneva: Librairie Droz. Forthcoming.
• “Rev. S. A. Schilstra: An Early (American) Promoter of Dutch Immigration to the Canadian Prairies, 1902-1905,” in the proceedings of the Fifteenth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies. Forthcoming.
• “Johann Jungnitz on the Use of Aristotelian Logic in Theology,” in Philosophie, Jurisprudenz und Theologie in Heidelberg an der Wende vom 16. zum 17 Jahrhundert, Joseph Freedman and Christoph Strohm, eds. Tübingen: Verlag Mohr Siebeck. Forthcoming.
• “God’s Eternal Decree and its Temporal Execution: The Role of this Distinction in Theodore Beza’s Theology,” in Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe, Mack Holt, ed. Aldershot: Ashgate. Forthcoming.
• “Calvin and Beza: The Role of the Decree-Execution Distinction in Their Theologies,” in Calvinus Evangelii Propugnator: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress on Calvin Research, David Wright, ed. Forthcoming.
• The First Dutch Settlement in Alberta: Letters from the Pioneer Years 1903-14. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Editor/Translator. 2005.
• Pioneer Church Life: The Beginnings of the First Christian Reformed Church in Canada 1903-1911.  Rocky Coulee Press. 2005.
• The Dutch in Urban America. Holland, Michigan: Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies. Editor, with Robert Swierenga and Hans Krabbendam. 2004.