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My first encounter with the psychology of religion must have been through the man I have always considered my true teacher: H. T. de Graaf.1,2 He was a typical liberal Protestant, who did not believe in the bodily resurrection, and for whom the significance of Easter and Ascension and other Christian feast days was not fixed, but formed the subject of inquisitive contemplation. He was a great scholar, an original and independent thinker, and a man of integrity and deep faith, but he was older than Roessingh, his predecessor at the University of Leiden, who died young.3 He ­commanded the respect of the students, but did not move them as Roessingh had done. During lectures he gave the impression of being someone who was genuinely interested in many things, who was very knowledgeable, thought about things seriously, and therefore had a lot to offer, yet struggled to find an adequate way of doing this (his explanations were dry and rather uninspiring) as well as being someone who lived a deeply pious life but was unable to share this with others.

The author utilizes Ian T. Ramsey's “model” construct as a vehicle to “disclose” the identity of the minister. Thus he uses the clown to point to the minister's vulnerability, his trust, his integrity, and shows how suffering can have a special relation to the understanding of the presence of God.