David R. Larson

What are the rules by which specialists in natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology properly distinguish truth from error? What procedural guidelines appropriately govern the work of specialists in social sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology? Do specialists in philosophy and theology have trustworthy rules for their work too? If not, why not? If so, in what ways are these norms similar to, and in what ways are they different from, the canons that we rightly expect natural and social scientists to follow? Because it responds to these questions with comprehensiveness, precision and clarity, and because it is one of the first publications by a younger theologian whose influence is growing, this book is worth studying today even though it was first published more than a dozen years ago.  Philip Clayton, who was born in 1956, earned degrees from Westmont College and Fuller Theological Seminary before studying the history of philosophy and theology for t...

David R. Larson presented this at the September 1, 2007 Memorial Service in Loma Linda, California for Ralph S. Larson (1920-2007). Our father was born on November 14, 1920 near Salem, Oregon. He was the eighth child in a family that would include five sons and four daughters, once his younger sister Doris was born. Of the nine children in his family of origin, she is the only one who still lives and we are delighted that she and her husband are with us today from Maryland. His mother’s family, which was of Irish and Scottish descent, traversed the Great Plains in the wagon trains of the nineteenth century. His father was an undocumented immigrant from Sweden. The men in his family worked in the forests, lumber mills, dairies and businesses of the Pacific Northwest. He might have lived a similar life had he not become a Seventh-day Adventist through the evangelistic campaigns and radio broadcasts of Elders Dan and Melvin Venden, the “true” Venden brothers who are respectively the uncle...

Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae David R. Larson Emeritus Professor of Religion Loma Linda University Personal Birth September 26, 1946 Childhood Homes Hawaii and Northern California Degrees Pacific Union College (1968) Bachelor of Arts (Theology) Claremont School of Theology (1973) Doctor of Ministry Claremont Graduate University Doctor of Philosophy Employment Southeastern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists  (1970 – 1974) Youth Pasrtor and Pastor Loma Linda University       School of Religion  (1974 – Present) Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor Professor        Center for Christian Bioethics (1982-2000) Co-Founder, Associate Director, Director, Theological Co-Director), M.A. Programs in Bioethics and Religion and Society (Deve...

Gerald Winslow asked me the following questions in preparation for an occasion in 2020 marking the retirement of Richard Rice, James Walters and me from Loma Linda University. I had been a youth pastor and then pastor for four years and a professor for forty-six. What would you like to share about your beginnings as a person on our planet? Family of origin? Siblings? Place? Time? Best childhood memories? My deceased father and mother were both Swedish and Irish and therefore so am I and so were my two deceased siblings.  Although we were all genetically pretty much alike, temperamentally we weren’t.  My father and younger brother were stereotypically Swedish.  My mother was and I am stereotypically Irish.  My sister, who was younger than both me and my brother, was the best blend of the two.  My mother grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska with two sisters and a brother where her German adoptive father was a salmon fisherman and her mother was a cook in a hospital....