Bernard Zylstra

Bernard Zylstra (1934–1986) was the principal and the professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His influence on the development of Christian Scholarship extended to the USA, UK, South Africa and Australia

Bernard Zylstra was born in 1934 in The Netherlands. His brother was Uko Zylstra, the professor of biology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Zylstra received an LL.B. degree from the University of Michigan. He received a S.J.D. from the Free University in Amsterdam, where he studied under Herman Dooyeweerd. Zylstra's dissertation was on the political theory of Harold Laski. Later, Zylstra would publish the related From Pluralism to Collectivism: The Development of Harold Laski's Political Thought in 1968. He would also come to edit Dooyeweerd's publication Roots of Western Culture (1979) and co-edit another publication Contours of Christian Philosophy by L. Kalsbeek's in 1975.