Live in the here and now

Hodnett finished the direct translation of the book around 1999, but has continued to edit it since then.

I Believe was self-published in the past few months and Hodnett said he would like for it to reach a larger readership now that the English-speaking community has access to it.

The book is about the 12 articles of faith contained in the Apostle’s Creed and Hodnett said it could serve as an introductory book to deeper theology.

“It’s written in easily understandable language, as opposed to many other theology books, but it still tackles deep questions,” said Hodnett.

“Van Ruler answers questions and talks directly and properly about things, he’s not skirting around the issues.

“A lot of well-meaning Christian books are written by people who don’t have the depth of understanding that a full-time theologian would have.”

Hodnett grew up in a Christian home and attended the Baptist Church, but was vaguely dissatisfied with the church’s view of retracting from the world and waiting for heaven.

After school he studied psychology, philosophy and world religions at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Here he searched for the meaning of life through various avenues, including Eastern religion, Kabbalah, philosophy and psychology.

At this time he met Prof Ben Engelbrecht, a former student of Van Ruler, who introduced Hodnett to Van Ruler’s work.

Hodnett studied Van Ruler’s theology in his Honour’s and Master’s degrees at Wits, and continued in his Th.D. at the University of Stellenbosch.

Hodnett said he found what he was searching for only in Van Ruler’s work, where one of the most important principles was love and the fact that salvation existed for the sake of creation, not the other way around.

Van Ruler said this world and life are to be enjoyed while we are here and that Christianity can guide us in that.

Furthermore, he said philosophy and theology are often indistinguishable from one another and he might be considered a philosophical theologian.

Hodnett is not Dutch by heritage and had to learn the language in order to translate Van Ruler’s work.

“I had some trouble translating the book from Dutch,” he added.

“First I had to learn Dutch and, as I was never very proficient in Afrikaans, it was quite a challenge.

“Furthermore, it was hard to translate some of the language while keeping the same meaning, especially with idiomatic language.”

He mentioned that he has translated more of Van Ruler’s work, but he is still considering whether or not to publish it.

Hodnett said he never expected and still does not expect the publishing of the book to be profitable, but rather wants to get Van Ruler’s work out there.

“If I was looking for these answers, there must be others searching for the same thing and this book is for them,” he said.

He currently runs his own software development company, but said he would again like to get more involved in theology and Van Ruler’s work.

The hard copy of I Believe can be bought online from loot.co.za or amazon.com and is available in e-book version from Amazon.

For a large number of copies of the book contact Hodnett (garth.hodnett@gmail.com).