Herman Dooyeweerd: Christ’s Cross of Propitiation

CHRIST’S CROSS OF PROPITIATION

by Herman Dooyeweerd

« […] Not God but sinful mankind is in need of justification, and the case is not tried in the court of reason but before the judgment seat of God. God loved the world He created with His perfect divine love. Man, who according to his divine calling and freedom was to dedicate the entire temporal creation to the glory of God, has corrupted this work of creation in its very root. God revealed His unfathomable love for us by sending into this world His Son—the eternal Word by whom all things were created—to suffer the eternal punishment for sin in our place. That is to say, God Himself, in the person of Christ Jesus, took upon Himself the shame and curse of the guilt of our sin. 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The whole life of Christ, from His birth to His death on the cross, was one road of sorrow and suffering. But He loved His own to the end. In the terrific battle with Satan He won the decisive victory. He brought about a radical redemption because He transformed the creation in its religious root and restored the communion of love with God.

Christ Jesus has said: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” 

He is the way. There is no other way to God than through Christ Jesus, because the radical guilt of sin cannot be removed except through an equally radical divine sacrifice.

He is the truth. Christ Jesus, and He alone, could say this of Himself. He exposed all lies, all hypocrisy, all duplicity. He entered the homes of the despised, the lepers, the pariahs, and spoke the truth to them, full of love and compassion. He showed them that they were utterly lost. They had to embrace Him with both arms if they wanted to be saved. The orthodox Pharisees could tolerate the blinding light of truth as little as the learned Greek philosophers. This gospel was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. But it was the only way out of death, unto life.

Christ is the life. He became life for us because, moved by boundless love for sinners, he voluntarily suffered eternal spiritual death on our behalf.

After His excruciating pain on Gethsemane and Golgotha, and after three days in the silent tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, there followed the divine dénouement of the world drama that had been set in motion by the fall into sin of the human race.

Christ ist erstanden, 

Aus der Verwesung Schoß. 

Reißet von Banden 

Freudig euch los! 

[“Christ is arisen 

Redeemed from decay 

The bonds that imprison 

Your souls, rend away!”] 

(lines from Goethe’s 'Faust') 

Through Christ’s resurrection, the life of the reborn creation arises from death. This is God’s truth; it is not a figment of the religious imagination. For Christ lives in all eternity. He works every day, even in the horrendous catastrophe of our time. These horrific days, in which the world is in flames from North to South and from East to West, were foretold by Christ. All these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

They must come to pass. They are signs of the times. The pervasiveness of sin is death in a thousand shapes and forms. But Christ watches and prays to His Father who is in heaven. For those who believe in him, the end is the triumph of His Kingdom. For it is only in appearance that the powerful of the world play an autonomous role in the course of events. God smites and chastises the world because it continues to reject Him and thinks it can do without Him. But for those who are hid in Christ the temporary trials and threats of death are nothing compared to the eternal bliss that will be revealed to them. In the words of Paul: 

“I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate me from the love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” »

(Herman Dooyeweerd, Amsterdam 1942. Translated by Magnus Verbrugge) FULL ENGLISH TEXT HERE

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« Our philosophy makes bold to accept the "stumbling block of the cross of Christ" as the corner stone of epistemology [basis of knowledge] (1 Cor 1:23). And thus it also accepts the cross of scandal, neglect and dogmatic rejection. In the limitation and weakness of the flesh, we grasp the absolute truth in our knowledge of God derived from His revelation, in prayer and worship. [...] True self-knowledge opens our eyes to the radical corruption of fallen man, to the radical lie which has caused his spiritual death. It therefore leads to a complete surrender to Him Who is the new root of mankind, and Who overcame death through his sufferings and death on the cross. In Christ's human nature our heavenly Father has revealed the fulness of meaning of all creation (Ephes 1:10), and through Him according to His Divine nature, God created all things as through the Word of his power (Heb 1:2, 3) ». (Herman Dooyeweerd, "New Critique of Theoretical Thought" Vol II pp 562-563) 

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« In its revelation of the fall, however, just like in that of creation, the Word of God penetrates to the root, to the religious centre of human nature. The fall is the apostasy of this centre, of this radix of existence, it is the falling away from God. This was spiritual death, because it is the apostasy from the absolute source of Life. Consequently the fall was radical. It involved the whole temporal cosmos, since the latter had its religious root only in mankind. Every conception which denies this radical sense of the fall is diametrically opposed to the basic motive of Holy Scripture. […] And because of the radical character of sin, redemption in Christ Jesus must also be radical. The Divine Word, through which, according to the pronouncement of John's gospel, all things were made, became flesh in Jesus Christ. The Word has entered into the root and the temporal ramifications, in body and soul, of human nature. And therefore it has brought about a radical redemption. Sin is not dialectically reconciled, but it is really propitiated. And in Christ as the new root of the human race, the whole temporal cosmos, which was religiously [ie in relation to Origin] concentrated in man, is in principle again directed toward God and thereby wrested free from the power of Satan. However, until the return of Christ, even humanity which is renewed in Him still shares in the apostate root of humankind. Consequently, the struggle of the Kingdom of God continues to be waged against the kingdom of darkness until the fulfillment of time. God maintains the fallen cosmos in His ‘common grace’ by His creating Word. The redeemed creation shall finally be freed from its participation in the sinful root of human nature and shine forth in a higher perfection.» (Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 175) 

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Free PDFs of Dooyeweerd’ books downloadable here: 

http://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com

Herman Dooyeweerd: Meaning in the fall of man under the curse of God's wrath

NOTE by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh: A key feature of Dooyeweerd’s thought is his insight that apostasy typically makes an idol of  — ie tries to integrate all of reality around — one single aspect of temporal existence. Dooyeweerd understands temporal reality as composed of fifteen creational “law-spheres” — aka “aspects”, “modalities of meaning”, “law-spheres” — which allow the “individuality structures” behind specific concrete things and events. Law-spheres (Aspects) are not abstracted properties of things, but ontically prior to things. Following the Genesis reference to animals being “created according to their kinds”, Dooyeweerd perceives the aspectual ordinances of Creation as being “irreducible” to each other. The attempt to reduce all of them to any single one automatically gives rise to idolatrous “-isms”, eg Rationalism, Materialism etc. Christ as Lord above time is the integration point of all Creation (“The stone the builders rejected has become the chief corner-stone”). In his website glossary note regarding aspects, J. Glenn Friesen gives us the following succinct statement by Dooyeweerd: “Iedere wetskring is in beginsel een zin-breking der boventijdelijke zintotaliteit.” [“Each law-sphere is in principle a refraction of meaning of the supratemporal totality of meaning”]. (From “De Theorie van de Bronnen van het Stellig Recht in het licht der Wetsidee,” Handelingen van de Vereeniging voor Wijsbegeerte des Rechts, XIX, 1932).

Meaning in the fall of man under the curse of God's wrath

By Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977)

(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought Vol 2)

There remains, however, another central problem of extreme importance: As regards his human nature, Christ is the root of reborn creation, and as such the fulness of meaning, the creature­ly Ground of the meaning of all temporal reality. But our tem­poral world in its apostate religious root lies under God’s curse, under the curse of sin. Thus there is a radical antithesis in the experiential side of the root of the earthly cosmos. It may be that this antithesis has been reconciled by the Redemption in Jesus Christ, but in temporal reality the unrelenting struggle between the kingdom of God and that of darkness will go until the end of the world. The falling away from God has affected our cosmos in its root and its temporal refraction of meaning. Is not this a final and decisive reason to distinguish meaning from reality? Does not the radical antithesis between the kingdom of God and that of darkness, which our transcendental Idea itself also recognizes as fundamental for philosophic thought, compel us to accept an ultimate dualism between meaning and reality?

Is sinful reality still meaning? Is it not meaningless, or rather the adversary of meaning, since meaning can only exist in the religious dependence on its Origin [ie our Creator]? Here we indeed touch the deepest problem of Christian philosophy. The latter cannot hope to solve it without the illumination of Divine Revelation if it wants to be guaranteed from falling back into the attitude of immanence-philosophy [ie non-Christian time-trapped philosophy].

I for one do not venture to try and know anything concerning the problem that has been raised except what God has vouchsafed to reveal to us in His Word. I do not know what the full effect of unrestrained sin on reality would be like. Thanks to God this unhampered influence does not exist in our earthly cosmos. One thing we know, viz. that sin in its full effect does not mean the cutting through of the relation of dependence between Creator and depraved creation, but that the fulness of being of Divine justice will express itself in reprobate creation in a tremendous way, and that in this process depraved reality cannot but reveal its creaturely mode of being as meaning. It will be meaning in the absolute subjective apostasy under the curse of God's wrath, but in this very condition it will not be a meaningless reality.

Sin causes spiritual death through the falling away from the Divine source of life, but sin is not merely privation, not something merely negative, but a positive, guilty apostasy insofar as it reveals its power, derived from creation itself. Sinful reality remains apostate meaning under the law and under the curse of God's wrath. In our temporal cosmos God's Common Grace reveals itself, as Kuyper brought to light so emphatically, in the preservation of the cosmic world-order. Owing to this preserving grace the framework of the temporal refraction of meaning [as per the creational law-spheres] remains intact.

The Christian as a stranger in this world.

Although the fallen earthly cosmos is only a sad shadow of God's original creation, and although the Christian can only consider himself as a stranger and a pilgrim in this world, yet he cannot recognize the true creaturely ground of meaning in the apostate root of this cosmos, but only in the new root, Christ. Any other view would inevitably result in elevating sin to the rank of an independent counter-power opposed to the creative power of God. And this would result in avoidance of the world, an unbiblical flight from the world. We have nothing to avoid in the world but sin. The war that the Christian wages in God's power in this temporal life against the Kingdom of darkness, is a joyful struggle, not only for his own salvation, but for God's creation as a whole, which we do not hate, but love for Christ's sake. We must not hate anything in the world but sin.

The apostate world cannot maintain any meaning as its own property in opposition to Christ. Common Grace.

Nothing in our apostate world can get lost in Christ. There is not any part of space, there is no temporal life, no temporal movement or temporal energy, no temporal power, wisdom, beauty, love, faith or justice, which sinful reality can maintain as a kind of property of its own apart from Christ.

Whoever relinquishes the world taken in the sense of sin, of the 'flesh' in its Scriptural meaning, does not really lose anything of the creaturely meaning, but on the contrary he gets a share in the fulness of meaning of Christ, in Whom God will give us everything. It is all due to God's common grace in Christ that there are still means left in the temporal world to resist the destructive force of the elements that have got loose; that there are still means to combat disease, to check psychiatric maladies, to practise logical thinking, to save cultural development from going down into savage barbarism, to develop language, to preserve the possibility of social interaction, to withstand injustice, and so on. All these things are the fruits of Christ's work, even before His appearance on the earth. From the very beginning God has viewed His fallen creation in the light of the Redeemer.

We can only face the problem of the effect on temporal meaning that the partial working of the falling away from the fulness of meaning has in spite of common grace, when we have gained an insight into the modal structures of the law-spheres [among God’s structural “ordinances” as referred to in the Psalms] within the temporal coherence of meaning. But—and with this we definitively reject any separation of meaning from reality — meaning in apostasy remains real meaning in accordance with its creaturely mode of being. An illogical reasoning can occur only within the logical modality [law-sphere] of meaning; illegality in its legal sense is only possible within the modality of meaning of the jural sphere; the non-beautiful can only be found within the modal aspect of meaning of the aesthetic law-sphere, just as organic disease remains something within the modal aspect of meaning of the biotic law-sphere, and so on. Sin, as the root of all evil, has no meaning or existence independent of the religious fulness of the Divine Law. In this sense St Paul's word is to be understood, to the effect that but for the law sin is dead (Rom 7:8)

All along the line meaning remains the creaturely mode of being under the law which has been fulfilled by Christ. Even apostate meaning is related to Christ, though in a negative sense; it is nothing apart from Him.

As soon as thought tries to speculate on this religious [ie creational root-related] basic truth, accessible to us only through faith in God's Revelation, it gets involved in insoluble antinomies. This is not due to any intrinsic contradiction between thought and faith, but rather to the mutinous attempt on the part of thought to exceed its temporal cosmic limits in its supposed self-sufficiency. For thought that submits to Divine Revelation and recognizes its own limits, the antithesis in the root of our cosmos is not one of antinomy [ie intrinsic contradiction]; rather it is an opposition on the basis of the radical unity of Divine Law; just as in the temporal law-spheres justice and injustice, love and hatred are not internally antinomous, but only contrasts determined by the norms in the respective modalities of meaning.

The religious value of the modal [creational ordinance] criterion of meaning.

If created reality is to be conceived of as meaning, one cannot observe too strictly the limits of the temporal modal law-spheres in philosophic thought. These limits have been set by the cosmic order of time in the specific 'sovereignty of the modal aspects within their own spheres. Any attempt to obliterate these limits by a supposedly autonomous thought results in an attack upon the religious fulness of meaning of the temporal creation.

If the attempt is made to reduce the modal meaning of the jural or that of the economic law-sphere to the moral one of the temporal love of one's neighbour, or if the same effort is made to reduce the modal meaning of number or that of language to the meaning of logic, it must be distinctly understood that the abundance of meaning of creation is diminished by this subjective reduction. And perhaps without realizing what this procedure implies, one puts some temporal aspect of reality in the place of the religious fulness of meaning in Christ. The religious value of the criterion of meaning is that it saves philosophic thought from falling away from this fulness.

(Extract from Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought Volume 2, pp 32-36)

NOTE

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), was a Dutch reformational thinker in the wake of Abraham Kuyper. Dooyeweerd has been described as “the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, even Spinoza not excepted.” 

Free PDFs of Dooyeweerds book downloadable here: 

http://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com

Herman Dooyeweerd: Time, Eternity and Selfhood

Read also:

“Dooyeweerd at the Movies: 

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’”

Herman Dooyeweerd: 

TIME, ETERNITY and SELFHOOD

“Ons Archimedisch punt, dat ons zelfbewustzijn (de crux van alle humanistische kennistheorie!) bepaalt, doet ons de tijdelijke werkelijkheid zien als een uiterst gedifferentieerde zin-breking van de religieuze zin-volheid van onzen kosmos doorhet prisma van den kosmischen tijd, welken tijd wij in den religieuzen wortel van ons zelfbewustzijn, in boventijdelijke zelf-heid transcendeeren, doch waarin wij metal onze tijdelijke bewustzijns- en andere kosmische functies tevens immanent verkeeren.” (Herman Dooyeweerd, De crisis der humanistische staatsleer in het licht eener calvinistische kosmologie en kennistheorie, Boekhandel W. ten Have, Amsterdam 1931, p93)
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dooy002cris01_01/colofon.php

“Our Archimedean point determines our self-consciousness (the crux of all humanist epistemology) and makes us see temporal reality as an exceedingly differentiated refraction of the religious fullness of meaning of our cosmos via the prism of cosmic time, which time we transcend in the religious root of our self-consciousness, in our supratemporal selfhood, but in which we at the same time dwell immanently with all our temporal consciousness and other cosmic functions.” (Herman Dooyeweerd: The Crisis in Humanist Political Theory, As seen from a Calvinist cosmology and epidemiology, Paideia Press, 2010, p 73)

TEMPORAL LAW-SPHERES AS REFRACTIONS OF SUPRA-TEMPORAL MEANING

Time structure (the horizon of time) and temporal duration.

In order to gain proper insight into the problem of time, it is of primary importance to remember that universal time, which embraces our entire temporal cosmic reality in all its modal aspects [law-spheres] of meaning, may not be identified with becoming, with continuously being subjected to change.

One can say that all genesis, all becoming and passing away, do take place within time, but not that time itself is becoming. Rather, within cosmic time, an initial distinction is required between (a) a law-side, and (b) a factual side subject to the former. These two sides co-exist in an unbreakable coherence.

According to its law-side cosmic time is the structural time-order embracing the entire temporal reality. As such, time bears a constant and transcendental character, that is to say, it makes possible temporal reality in its immanent structure.

This invariant cosmic time structure serves as the foundation both for the constant structures of the temporal modalities of reality (those of number, space, motion, organic life, feeling, and so on), and for the individuality structures of things, events, societal relationships, etc. etc. The individuality structures overarch the aspects and group them in different ways into individual totalities.

The 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES of COSMIC TIME 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes of consciousness/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides) 

The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea designates this time structure as such as the temporal horizon of all of empirical reality. As to its factual side time in its universal cosmic character is indeed a flowing continuum (fluidum), the continual mutual fusion of moments, which are temporal moments of subjective states, acts, events and so on.

According to its factual side time can be called duration in moments, and it soon becomes apparent that this "duration" can never be "empty": it can never be separated from the factual side of temporal reality, no more than it can exist outside the universal time-structure, outside the horizon of time. On no account should this duration be identified with one of its modal aspects, such as the duration of motion, emotional duration or historical duration. On the contrary, its cosmic continuity is of a supra-modal character which pervades and overarches all law-spheres.

The whole of temporal reality, within its time-structure, has a certain cosmic duration which flows through its modal aspects in a supra-temporal continuum.

This cosmic duration within the time-structure can only be experienced by the human being, who has a supra-temporal center of its temporal existence, the heart, in which eternity was placed.

Time can only be experienced in its relation to created eternity (the aevum, as it is called in Scholasticism, in opposition to the aeternitas increata, the uncreated eternity of God).

All immanent temporal time-measurement, for example in hours, minutes and seconds, in the final analysis remains external and as such cannot provide us with an awareness of time. Our intuition of time, which itself cannot be grasped conceptually, is undeniably rooted in the identity of our selfhood, in the transcendent center of our existence. All that restlessness in our experience of time, as Augustine already realized from a truly Christian point of view, derives from the heart, from the stirring of time and eternity in the innermost depths of our existence.

(Excerpt from Herman Dooyeweerd, TIME, LAW,and HISTORY: Selected Essays, Collected Works, Series B — Volume 14, Translated by Daniël Strauss, General Editor Daniël Strauss, 2017, pp 3-5)

Purchase options and free PDF of volume HERE:

http://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com

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COMMENT: 

ARCHIMEDEAN POINT = MELCHIZEDEK POINT?

“Thubhairt an Tighearna rim Thighearna, Suidh aig mo dheaslàimh, gus an cuir mi do naimhdean nan stòl fod chasan…Mhionnaich an Tighearna, agus cha ghabh e aithreachas, Is sagart thu gu bràth, a rèir òrdagh Mhelchisedeic.”

 (Salm 110:1&4, Am Bìoball Gàidhlig 1992)

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at My right hand,

Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”

…The Lord has sworn

And will not relent,

“You are a priest forever

According to the order of Melchizedek.”’

 (Psalm 110:1&4, NKJV)

Currently reading Hebrews. Just powerfully realised that Dooyeweerd’s “Archimedean Point” could well have been inspired by Hebrews 6:19,20 -

“Sure and steadfast anchor of the soul (heart)” —

So could the Archimedean Point even be called the Melchizedek Point? :

“Gum biodh sinne a theich thuige airson dìdein air ar misneachadh gu làidir gus grèim a ghabhail air an dòchas a tha romhainn, agus tha sin againne mar acair stèidhichte is cinnteach dhar n‑anam, 's a tha a' dol a‑steach air taobh a‑staigh a' chùirtear far an deach Ìosa, an ro‑ruitheadair, a‑steach air ar son‑ne, a chaidh a dhèanamh na àrd‑shagart gu sìorraidh a rèir òrduigh Mhelchisedeic.” (Eabhraich 6:18-20, An Tiomnadh Nuadh anns an Eadar-Theangachadh Ùr Gàidhlig 2017)

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:19,20)

I am remembering that Andree Troost in his book “What is Christian Philosophy: An Introduction to the Cosmonomic Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd (Paedeia Press, 2020) helpfully relates Dooyeweerd’s “supratemporal” feature to Melchizedek.

But the “Archimedean Point” thing has hit home with me personally just now, having been reading Hebrews daily, then this evening reading the following passage from Dooyeweerd:

“Right from the beginning the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea related the problem of time to that of the true character of reality, the being of what is. Since this insight into the ‘being of what is’ is entirely dependent on the choice of the Archimedean point or the transcendent starting-point of philosophical thought, and since the latter in turn determines the understanding of the cosmonomic idea as a foundation for philosophy, it should not be surprising as well that the philosophical treatment of the problem of time will faithfully mirror the assumed cosmonomic idea. On the immanence standpoint the problem of time becomes a wellspring of antinomies. The basic antimony of all immanence philosophy, after all, is the choice of Archimedean point within temporal reality itself. This antimony must then be camouflaged through the primary absolutisation of temporal aspects of meaning in which the thinker believes he can find its time-transcendent starting-point. But this primary absolutisation, through which the aspects or modalities concerned are apparently elevated above the universal temporal coherence prevailing between them, causes one to disregard the cosmic universality of time. No single absolutisation of a temporal aspect into a supra-temporal, self-contained resting point for philosophical thought, can indeed elevate that thought above time. This is the basic antimony of metaphysical immanence philosophy, which, for all its attempts to break through the bondage to time by means of metaphysical concepts, is itself only possible by the grace of time.”

(Herman Dooyeweerd, TIME, LAW, and HISTORY: Selected Essays, Paideia Press 2017, pp 1,2)

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

Dooyeweerd used the term “Archimedean Point” only in his earlier work, as he explains in this extract from a 1974 interview with Magnus Verbrugge (translated by Dr. J. Glenn Friesen 2007):

DOOYEWEERD: Well, the term 'Archimedean point' is derived from a saying of the great Greek natural scientist Archimedes, the defender of Syracuse during the Roman sea attack [vlootaanval]. He said, "Give me a point where I can stand, and I will move the earth." He had brought [physical] mechanics to a rather high degree of perfection so that this [saying] was something that was possible in early Greek thought. The Archimedean point is derived from this saying. In philosophy, it is necessary to have a point where we can stand, and from which we can obtain a view of totality over the whole of human experience in time, within time, within the order of time.

VERBRUGGE: A kind of lookout post?

DOOYEWEERD: A kind of a lookout post, but one that is set up in such a way that you cannot look out from a particular point of view that is contained within our temporal world of experience [onze tijdelijke ervaringswereld]. The viewpoint is one that transcends our temporal world of experience. And from that viewpoint we can indeed obtain a view over the whole. But as long as we remain within that of which we want to obtain an overview, we can only receive a view from out of a particular viewpoint [een bepaalde gezichtshoek].

VERBRUGGE: You have to transcend it.

DOOYEWEERD: You have to transcend it [je moet er bovenuit]. Indeed.

VERBRUGGE: And what is now the Archimedean point that you have chosen, or found?

DOOYEWEERD: Yes. I currently no longer use the term, and I in fact have not done so for quite some time. It was a term that I used in particular when I was working out the ideas of the Philosophy of the Law-Idea in its first edition, the Dutch edition. I used the term at that time, and I needed it in order to distinguish my standpoint from other views at the time that sought their point of departure within the temporal world itself.* In particular, they sought their standpoint in logical thought, or in sensory perception, or in some other particular point of view or particular aspect of our experience. So that is the Archimedean point, and we seek for it.
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*Footnote by J Glenn Friesen: The important point here is that Dooyeweerd's philosophy begins from a standpoint that is not within the temporal world. Without his idea of the supratemporal selfhood, which stands outside of time, we cannot understand his philosophy or any part of it. Dooyeweerd has said that the theoretical attitude of thought, the Gegenstand-relation cannot be understood apart from this. The idea of the mutual irreducibility of the modal aspects can also not be understood apart from this supratemporal standpoint. The Christian Ground-motive of creation, fall and redemption depends upon it, for Dooyeweerd understands these ideas in their supratemporal religious root. And even our understanding of Word-revelation and of Christ's incarnation depends on it.

FULL VERBRUGGE INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION:

https://jgfriesen.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/1974interview.pdf

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And let us immediately clarify and emphasise most forcefully that Friesen’s latter statement that “The Christian Ground-motive of creation, fall and redemption depends upon it [this supratemporal standpoint], for Dooyeweerd understands these ideas in their supratemporal religious root” in no way divorces “creation, fall and redemption” from everyday grounded reality but contrariwise guarantees (rescues) concrete existence in an exhaustively comprehensive manner: “A body didst Thou prepare for me” (Heb 10:5). [FMF]

Remembering Professor Donald MacLeod (Grace in Common: Neo-Calvinism podcast with James Eglinton)

 

GRACE IN COMMON

HERMAN DOOYEWEERD: SPARKLING CRYSTAL OF THE TEMPORAL WORLD

Law-Spheres (ie Aspects) are temporal refractions
of the fullness of Time and of the fullness of Meaning.

HERMAN DOOYEWEERD:

SPARKLING CRYSTAL OF THE TEMPORAL WORLD

It is the very nature of theoretical thought itself, in distinction from the prescientific mode of thinking, that forces the transcendental basic problem upon the critical attitude of thought. The basic problem of philosophy in its above formulation is not an arbitrary construction of mine. On the contrary, it is imposed on us by the nature of the theoretical attitude of thought itself. For wherein lies the distinction between this attitude, which is inherent in all scientific activity as such, and the pretheoretical or non-scientific attitude? Without question, this distinction lies in its character of placing itself in opposition to, or taking distance from, its field of investigation. But what does this mean?

Theoretical thought, insofar as it is placed opposite its fields of inquiry as its logical correlates, is undoubtedly logical in character. In this theoretical function it moves within the logical aspect of reality, an aspect which we can provisionally define as that of analytical distinction (or distinctness). There are, however, numerous other aspects of reality. These include the aspects of quantity (number), space, motion, organic life, and feeling; also the historical aspect, the lingual aspect, the aspect of social interaction, and the economic, aesthetic, jural, ethical, and faith aspects. None of these remaining aspects is intrinsically logical (analytical) in character.

Now, the theoretical attitude of thought demands above all that these aspects be logically separated or held apart in logical analysis or dissection. When temporal reality is theoretically pried asunder in this way into the diversity of its aspects, the non-logical aspects are necessarily placed in opposition to the logical aspect. As the German language succinctly expresses this, they enter into a Gegenstand relation to the logical aspect of thought. In the theoretical attitude, therefore, the logical function of thought is set in opposition to the non-logical aspects, which form its fields of investigation. […] 

In the pre-theoretical, non-scientific attitude of thought, the attitude of so-called naive experience, the situation is entirely different. In naive experience, too, we are clearly aware of the distinct aspects of reality. We perceive a quantity or number of branches and leaves on a tree. We notice its spatial shapes and its movements. We observe that it lives. We see its sensible qualities, such as its colors and its sensible shape. We know of the logical features that distinguish it from other things. We also are conscious of its cultural properties, its name, its value in social life, its economic and aesthetic qualities, and so on. 

Yet the logical function of our thought here does not adopt a theoretical distance in opposition to the non-logical aspects. It does not pry reality asunder, but rather takes its stand completely within reality. The non-logical aspects are not experienced explicitly here, that is, as discrete functions that stand opposed to the logical aspect of thought. On the contrary, our experience of them is implicit, for they are encountered together, in an indissoluble coherence with the logical thought aspect, as inherent factors of individual totalities (concrete things, concrete events, concrete people, concrete acts, concrete societal relationships in state, church, business, school, family, etc.).

There can be no doubt that naive experience alone perceives reality in the structure in which it presents itself. Its attitude of thought remains completely immersed in that reality. The theoretical dissection that reality undergoes in the Gegenstand relation does not really pry it asunder. Reality itself remains intact and integral. The logical aspect remains embedded in the unbreakable coherence of the aspects, as one of the many facets displayed by the sparkling crystal of the temporal world. It is only within our theoretical consciousness that we perform the artful trick which may be compared to the slicing apart of a whole fruit into distinct pieces.

Thus, the theoretical Gegenstand relation does not show us reality as it is; it rather presents it as it has been artificially dissected or pried asunder. For this reason, it can only have existence within the non-dissected structure of temporal reality. This means that the theoretical Gegenstand relation is not primary, but only secondary. It is the product of a theoretical analysis, in which something essential is abstracted from the structure of reality as this is given in naive experience. In other words, it is produced by theoretical abstraction.

(Extract from REFORMATION AND SCHOLASTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY – VOLUME II pp 97-98) [Free PDF download of this book available HERE]

Moreover…

DOOYEWEERD: THE FALL AND COMMON GRACE

Whoever holds that the original creational ordinances are unrecognisable for fallen humankind because they were supposedly fundamentally altered by the advent of sin, essentially ends up denying the true significance of God’s common grace which maintains these ordinances. Sin did not change the creational decrees but the direction of the human heart, which turned away from its Creator. Undoubtedly, this radical fall impacts the way in which humankind discloses the powers that God enclosed in creation. The fall affects natural phenomena, which humankind can no longer control. It impacts itself in theoretical thought led by an idolatrous ground-motive. It appears in the subjective way in which humankind gives form to the principles established by God in his creation as norms for human action. The fall made special institutions necessary, such as the state and the church in its institutional form. But even these special institutions of general and special grace are based upon the ordinances that God established in his creation order. Neither the structures of the various aspects of reality, nor the structures that determine the nature of concrete creatures, nor the principles which serve as norms for human action, were altered by the fall. A denial of this leads to the unscriptural conclusion that the fall is as broad as creation; i.e., that the fall destroyed the very nature of creation. This would mean that sin plays a self-determining, autonomous role over against God, the creator of all. Whoever maintains such a position denies the absolute sovereignty of God and grants Satan a power equal to that of the Origin of all things. (Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture, pp 59, 60)