Philosophical theology

Item — Box: 35, Folder: 3

Identifier: V

Staff Only

Content Description

From the Collection: The LaRondelle Papers contain a sampling of his correspondence through the years. It is doubtful this represents the full body of his correspondence. Presumably, the rest has been lost. There is a large assemblage of his writings. Two binders [box 1 folder 32 a & b] purported to be the sum of his writings. Establishment of this fact was outside the scope of this work. There are many other copies of his writings beyond these binders in the collection. There is a partial bibliography in the Festschrift published in his honor. There are some files from his Seminary teaching years, but nothing from his pre-Andrews University time. The largest portion of the collection contains his topical files. These are divided by topics much the way he had them in his own filing system with many subfolders within the larger general topics. There is also a large collection of sound recordings of presentations by LaRondelle through the years on a wide variety of topics.

One interesting addition to the papers was LaRondelle’s theological library. Reportedly, hallways and walls in his home were lined with book cases to contain all of his books. His brother-in-law, Peter van Bemmelen, also a systematic theologian at Andrews University, told the Center that when LaRondelle retired in 1991 and prepared to move to Florida that he gave away about half of his book collection to colleagues and students. Even at that his library when given to Andrews University totaled over 3,000 books.

The Center for Adventist Research worked through the library preparing a bibliography of what was in it. At the same time we made a subjective evaluation of the extent of marking done by LaRondelle in each book. This was on a scale of 0 to 4 with 0 being no marks and 4 being very extensive marks. Ultimately the Center retained in our book collection all books in categories 4 and 5. The thought being that those studying LaRondelle’s life would find his comments insightful to his thinking on particular topics. A complete bibliography is included at the end of the collection. The retained books, around 600 titles, may be located by doing a Library catalog title search for “LaRondelle Library Collection.” The bulk of the LaRondelle library was sent to the Adventist University of Africa, in Kenya, to build up their theology collection. A few titles were kept by the Andrews University Seminary Library Collection and a few were kept by Peter van Bemmelen, LaRondelle’s brother-in-law.