‘He regarded his books as good friends’

The global legacy and influence of a Reformed scholar and educator will live on in Canada, with the opening of the H. Evan Runner Reading Room at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario, in his honour.

And what will be available for visitors to read?

The personal libraries and papers of his students: two equally influential Reformed Canadian theologians, Albert M. Wolters and Calvin George Seerveld, who both named Runner as key in shaping their lives, work and ministries, and who accepted Redeemer’s offer to steward their collections.

Wolters, who was on hand to cut the ribbon to open the room on March 27, called Runner “my father and teacher,” and Seerveld, who died in August 2025, has always credited Runner’s influence on his faith, life and scholarship, saying “he spiritually changed my life.”

The idea for donating the collections to Redeemer was catalyzed in 2023 by Seerveld. Seerveld had already donated his art collection to Trinity Christian College in Chicago, where he had taught in the 1960s, and was looking for a home for his beloved books, papers and fountain pens. He reached out via Isabella Guthrie-McNaughton, a former librarian at the Institute for Christian Studies and a library volunteer at Redeemer. Redeemer’s library director, Armen Svadjian, met with Seerveld in 2024 and assured him that, at Redeemer, the collection would be both protected and public.

“He wanted it to go to a good home, where we would be able to steward it well,” Svadjian said. The library consulted Jessica Joustra, neo-Calvinist scholar and associate professor of religion and theology at Redeemer, on whether the collections were worth preserving. Her answer? A resounding “yes.”

Over the next two years, Svadjian arranged to send teams of students and staff to Seerveld’s home in Toronto and Wolters’ home in Ancaster to inventory, organize, box and move the thousands of books, files, newspaper clippings, letters, sermons and memorabilia from a combined total of more than 130 years of reading, thinking, writing and sharing of their neo-Calvinist worldviews. Appraisers viewed the collections, reviewed the inventories prepared by Redeemer and provided valuations.

Profoundly grateful

At the grand opening, Wolters said he was delighted to have been asked to donate his library and papers to the institution where he spent the past 40 years of his academic career. He described how influential Runner had been in his development as a scholar and as a Christian. He credited Runner, who had been his professor in 1961 when he was an undergraduate student at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, for moving him from being an agnostic to becoming a Christian. Thanks to Runner, Wolters did a public profession of faith in his home congregation of Victoria, B.C., the following summer.

Wolters also said it was “remarkable the ways” his career has intersected with Seerveld’s. He said both he and Seerveld studied at Calvin under Runner, and both taught at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Both have acknowledged Runner’s influence and worldview on their work.

“I am profoundly grateful to have had these men in my life and proud to have my name associated with theirs,” Wolters said.

Seerveld’s daughter, Gioia Seerveld, said her family appreciates the care and dedication Redeemer applied to her father’s collection.

“If Cal had been able to see his books and papers so respectfully organized, labelled and cared for as you have done for him here, he would have been eternally grateful to you all,” said Gioia Seerveld in written comments shared at the opening.

“Cal Seerveld’s books and papers meant more to him than most other things on this earth,” she said. “He regarded his books as good friends. He spent time with his books and he treasured his books. We know he would be very happy that they will now live on to benefit other people’s lives.”

Friendship and mentorship

Dawn Berkelaar, a part-time adjunct instructor in environmental science at Redeemer, said reading Wolters’ Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview as an undergraduate at Dordt College was transformative to her own scholarship. As someone who now lives in Hamilton, Berkelaar said she re-read Creation Regained four years ago, then reached out to Wolters. The two have formed a friendship, meeting regularly to discuss wide-ranging topics.

“Al’s intellect could have made him proud and arrogant, but he has lived with the kind of humility and trust described in Psalm 131,” Berkelaar said. “His trust in God corresponds to a trustful way of reading and responding to Scripture.” 

English professor Ben Faber said he already has plans to sift through the personal libraries of both Seerveld and Wolters – the things they read for fun – and look for patterns and common themes among the titles, authors and topics.

This summer, he’ll be focusing on Seerveld.

“I am curious about Seerveld’s reading habits,” Faber said. He will look at Seerveld’s books, examine the things he scribbled in the margins and look for evidence for how Seerveld’s thinking about “allusivity, form, style and appreciation” as they relate to art connect with his appreciation of literature.

Ongoing influence

Runner’s grandson, Steven Runner, brought greetings and gratitude on behalf of his family from Pella, Iowa, and said everywhere he goes, people tell him about the influence of his grandfather on their lives and scholarship. That influence was consistent and personal, in addition to being academic. Runner said he could never go for a walk with his grandfather without hearing him praise God for the beauty of creation, or talk about “the authority of God’s word over all of life.”

Redeemer president David Zietsma said the university was honoured to steward the collections.

Also on hand were former students of Seerveld, Wolters and Runner, including Don McNally, who said he had studied under all three.

Svadjian said Runner’s influence through his students is global. For example, Wolters’ 1985 Creation Regained was recently cited in a research paper by a graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary on a neo-Calvinist approach to competitive computer gaming, entitled “Competitive Gaming Coram Deo: An Examination of the Fundamentals for a Kuyperian Collegiate eSports Program.”

Redeemer also plans to host an annual academic conference on Runner’s influence, Svadjian said.

“We look forward to seeing what scholars can do with the unpublished work of Al and Cal.”