“The human ego expresses itself in the entire temporal human existence, but it recedes as an intangible phantom as soon as we try to localize it in our temporal experience.” (Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought’, Vol 2, p 115)
| [NOTE: “Religious” = “the innate impulse of the human selfhood to direct itself toward the true or toward a pretended absolute Origin of all temporal diversity of meaning” (Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought]. |
(The following is text of recent informal email to my brother
HUMAN SELFHOOD AS SUPRA-TEMPORAL HEART: “Supra-rational” is not “Irrational” (Dooyeweerd to Van Til)
Dear Neil,
I am encouraged by and I appreciate very much indeed your taking time to read Dooyeweerd’s long answer to the Curators regarding Valentijn Hepp’s accusations of theological irregularities (PDF).
I started looking up the Gordon Clark/ Cornelius Van Til dispute you mentioned but got sidelined by something else (relevant enough I guess) by Van Til, of which the following is an extract (note my bolding of this sentence with the key term ‘religious’ to which I will return): “Dooyeweerd speaks of his confessional Calvinism as a religious rather than as a doctrinal position”).
I should also mention in passing that despite Van Til’s denunciation of Dooyeweerd’s so-called “second way” in the English edition of his New Critique, Dooyeweerd insisted that he had merely “sharpened” what he had written in his earlier Dutch edition.
Moreover, Dooyeweerd certainly wasn’t, as VT writes, “following Kuyper’s scholasticism instead of his Calvinism” but critiqued such scholasticism (eg see my LOGOS link in previous email).
Thirdly, Van Til’s “he commits himself to a method of philosophical thought which is, in the last analysis, critical in the Kantian sense of the term” is (surely intentionally?) insulting, since Dooyeweerd’s ‘New Critique of Theoretical Thought’ was essentially a riposte to Kant (as Kant’s main work was a riposte to David Hume). In regards to Kant, see also the James K.A Smith quote below from his intro to the 2012 Paedeia Press edition of ‘Twilight of Western Thought’, and also the extended Dooyeweerd quote below (near finish), entitled ‘THE GREAT TURNING POINT’.
Anyway, here follows the quote from Van Til that I got sidetracked by:
« Unfortunately Kroner has not taken note of the fact that so far as he is following Kuyper’s scholasticism instead of his Calvinism, Dooyeweerd has, basically, committed himself to the same sort of position that Kroner himself espouses. Dooyeweerd has, especially by his “second way,” made things extremely difficult for those who, with him, hold to confessional Calvinism. Not that Dooyeweerd no longer holds to his original confessional Calvinism. He expresses belief in it in his later as well as in his earlier works. But — and this is the ‘Sprengende Punkt’ [‘Explosive Point’] — in his later, more definitely than in his earlier writings, Dooyeweerd speaks of his confessional Calvinism as a religious rather than as a doctrinal position. In his “second way,” i.e. in his strictly transcendental critique of theoretical reason, there is no room for his confessional convictions. Our own puzzlement with Dooyeweerd’s position is similar to that of Kroner. Dooyeweerd is obviously a Calvinist in the confessional sense of the term. Yet, especially in his later writings, he commits himself to a method of philosophical thought which is, in the last analysis, critical in the Kantian sense of the term. If Dooyeweerd had carried out the principles of his basic Calvinistic confessional convictions, then he would not only have shown that the Christian view of man, of logic and of fact is diametrically opposed to the non-Christian view of man, of logic and of fact, but also that the process of abstraction, and of synthesis, i.e. the entire process of human interpretation, cannot even get under way except upon the presupposition of the truth of the biblical narrative as a whole. He would then have pointed out, not that nothing conceptual can be said about God, but that no reactions on the part of any human being, whether in the forms of groans and sighs or “melodies in the heart,” to anything make sense unless the confessional stance he took in his inaugural address be thought of as the only possible foundation for it. » (Til, Cornelius Van, and Eric H. Sigward. 1997. The Pamphlets, Tracts, and Offprints of Cornelius Van Til. Electronic ed. Labels Army Company: New York.)
I have not the slightest doubt that, if Dooyeweerd ever (as he may well have done) found himself reading these comments by Van Til, his own “Sprengende Punkt [Explosive Point]” would most certainly would have triggered! Van Til’s logicistic/ rationalistic tendency is to the fore here (“the Christian view of man, of logic and of fact is diametrically opposed to the non-Christian view of man, of logic and of fact”), and that, as Dooyeweerd frankly confronts Van Til with in ‘Jerusalem and Athens’, is why VT (followed by Greg Bahnsen and John Frame*) cannot critically locate (pigeonhole) Dooyeweerd, and so concludes that D has lost his way in Barthianism or mysticism.
*Cf also Frame’s comment in his ‘The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God’ —
“My fear, in relation to the intense concern with encyclopedia among some thinkers, is that that concern represents in part a search for a kind of unequivocal "bedrock," an ultimate priority, an absolute "starting point" other than Scripture. Dooyeweerd finally locates his "Archimedean point" in the human heart, which is thought in some odd sense to transcend time. Kuyper never resolved the question of "priority" in that sort of decisive way. But in Van Til we have found a thinker who does not need to find some form of human thought that is "prior to" all others, since he is far more self-conscious about the implications of the primacy of Scripture itself. If we find our "starting point" in Scripture, then it really doesn't matter so much which science is based on which. The important thing is that all are based on the teachings of Scripture, and beyond that they can work out their interrelations as seems wise. » (John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God’, P&R, 1987, page 92)
Van Til by predilection had two pre-labelled conceptual jam jars to hand. One labeled “rational”. The other “irrational”. Both options are “theoretical-conceptual” in Dooyeweerd’s parlance — that is they are contrasts within a single law-sphere, ie the ‘Analytical’ modality. So when confronted by Dooyeweerd’s Biblical preoccupation with, and championing of, the concrete integral reality into which Christ became incarnate as New Root (involving the full-on interwoveness of all fifteen temporal modalities rooted in Christ above Time), and when confronted by Dooyeweerd’s Biblical preoccupation with the concrete “supra-rational”, “supra-theoretical” human selfhood (“heart”) as core of concrete cosmic reality in Christ, Van Til’s recourse is necessarily to find a third jam jar which he duly labels “mysticism”.
In his exchange with Van Til in the festschrift ‘Jerusalem and Athens’, Dooyeweerd writes (my bolding):
« In my various explanations of the transcendental critique both within and outside my work ‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought’, I have always emphasized its biblical starting-point. What, then, so I ask myself again, may have made you think that this critique would be not “directly” dependent upon the transcendent “biblical truths?” It seems to me that it is again a certain rationalistic view of the divine Word-revelation that hinders you from seeing the fundamental difference and the true relation between the central religious and the theoretical-conceptual sphere of knowledge. The difference you apparently deny, and this is why the question concerning their true relation does in fact not come up for discussion in your train of thought.« […] we may say that, according to its positive meaning, the human ego is the religious concentration point or center of man’s existence. This is what the Bible, in a pregnant sense, calls the “heart,” from which are the issues of life, from which proceed all sins and in which takes place rebirth out of the Holy Ghost.
« The Bible does not speak of this religious center in conceptual terms, no more than Jesus in his night conversation with Nicodemus gave a conceptual circumscription of rebirth as the necessary condition of seeing the kingdom of God. The same holds good with respect to the biblical revelation of creation, man’s fall into sin, and redemption through Jesus Christ. You often speak of the “scriptural concepts of creation, of sin, and of redemption,” as revealed concepts, whose normativity ought to be our basic view of objectivity. But the Word-revelation does not reveal concepts of creation, sin, and redemption.
« You do not seem to have seen that words and concepts cannot be identical. “Now, to be sure,” you say, “when we speak of creation, we use concepts. There is no other way of speaking of God and of his relation to man.” What, in my opinion, you should have said is that when we speak of creation, we use human words varying with the language of which we avail ourselves, and multivocal in common parlance. But in biblical usage they have got an identical revelational meaning in so far as they relate to God in his self-revelation as the absolute Origin of all that through his Word has been called into being. This revelational meaning transcends every human concept since it is of a supra-rational character. Supra-rational should by no means be confused with irrational. It is not, like the latter, the opposite, but the presupposition of the rational, just like the human self-hood is presupposed in every human thought and every human concept.
« God’s self-revelation in Holy Scripture as Creator and Redeemer concerns the central religious relation of man to his absolute Origin. Its true meaning is therefore to be understood by man only if his heart has been opened up to it through the moving power of the Holy Ghost, which is the dunamis of the biblical Word-revelation. What is said here about the dunamis of the Word-revelation and the central role of the heart in the understanding of its meaning is in complete accordance with the biblical testimony (cf. Is 6:10–13; Acts 16:14) and with the opinion of Calvin (cf the citations from the Institutes in New Critique Vol I, pp 516-7).« But you place it “over against the simple thought-content of Scripture” and are of the opinion that it adds still further to the ambiguity of my transcendental critique. You think so, however, not on biblical ground, but in consequence of a rationalistic view of the Word-revelation and of the religious relation of man to God, which, you feel, is of a rational-ethical character. This rationalism implies also a relapse into a metaphysical theory of the intrinsical divine being and its attributes, which Calvin called a “vacua et meteorica speculatio.”
(Broader context of foregoing quote is here: ‘Jerusalem & Athens’: Dooyeweerd to Van Til (3): "a typical rationalistic scholastic tendency in your theological thought")
That word “supra-rational” is admittedly not per se greatly illuminating as terminological choice. James K.A. Smith in his intro to the 2012 Paedeia Press edition of ‘Twilight of Western Thought’, writes (my bolding):
« What exactly is this project? The key to this question is found in the subtitle to the book; Dooyeweerd is here offering [‘In the Twilight of Western Thought:] Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought’. Both the genius and heart of Dooyeweerd's work lies in this 'critique' of reason - a delimitation of reason's claim to autonomy. Thus, the beginning chapters of the book are also the most crucial: while philosophy from Plato to Husserl has claimed that reason operates apart from extra-philosophical "commitments”, Dooyeweerd is intent on demonstrating that all theoretical thought - philosophy included - is ultimately grounded in both pre-theoretical and supra-theoretical commitments which function as the condition of the possibility for theory. These commitments or beliefs are of an ultimate nature: they cannot be demonstrated, but are rather the basis for demonstration. Thus we might describe Dooyeweerd's project as a certain critique of pure reason. However, in contrast to Kant, Dooyeweerd's critique seeks to demonstrate that 'pure' unalloyed reason is a myth, a pretended autonomy.” (James K.A. Smith, editorial intro, In The Twilight Of Western Thought’, Paedeia Press, 2012 [Free immediate PDF download of book])
So to try to pull my main train of thought together with all the above, in Dooyeweerdian terms the concreteness of reality is rooted with Christ above time, in the realm of the “supra-temporal heart”, ie in the “supra-rational” realm where (as elaborated in the Jerusalem and Athens quote above) “the human ego is the religious concentration point or center of man’s existence. This is what the Bible, in a pregnant sense, calls the “heart,” from which are the issues of life, from which proceed all sins and in which takes place rebirth out of the Holy Ghost.”
With Van Til “presuppositions” are generally presented as “propositional” axioms (Christian or otherwise). Dooyeweerd was primarily concerned with stuctural « states of affairs”, occasionally referred to as “presupposita” (ie the prerequisites or structural foundations for any thinking process at all by anybody).
As usual, I am writing too much, but let me please close with the following from Dooyeweerd’s seminal 1935 Foreword to his ‘New Critique of Theoretical Thought’:
« THE GREAT TURNING POINT
« The great turning point in my thought was marked by the discovery of the religious root of thought itself, whereby a new light was shed on the failure of all attempts, including my own, to bring about an inner synthesis between the Christian faith and a philosophy which is rooted in faith in the self-sufficiency of human reason.
« I came to understand the central significance of the "heart", repeatedly proclaimed by Holy Scripture to be the religious root of human existence.
« On the basis of this central Christian point of view I saw the need of a revolution in philosophical thought of a very radical [cf radix] character. Confronted with the religious root of the creation, nothing less is in question than a relating of the whole temporal cosmos, in both its so-called 'natural' and 'spiritual' aspects, to this point of reference. In contrast to this basic Biblical conception, of what significance is a so-called 'Copernican' revolution which merely makes the 'natural-aspects' of temporal reality relative to a theoretical abstraction such as KANT's 'transcendental subject'?
« From a Christian point of view, the whole attitude of philosophical thought which proclaims the self-sufficiency of the latter, turns out to be unacceptable, because it withdraws human thought from the divine revelation in Christ Jesus.
« The first result of the Biblical point of view with respect to the root of all temporal reality was a radical break with the philosophical view of reality rooted in what I have called the immanence-standpoint.
« The discovery of the transcendental ground-Idea at the foundation of all philosophical thought, made it possible to display the different theoretical views concerning the structure of reality, as developed by the dominant immanence-philosophy, in their dependence upon a supra-theoretical a priori. It made the inauguration of criticism possible upon a much more deeply lying plane than a supposed merely theoretical one.
« If temporal reality itself cannot be neutral with respect to its religious root, if in other words the whole notion of a static temporal cosmos 'an sich' [in itself] , independent of the religious root of mankind, rests on a fundamental misconception, how can one any longer seriously believe in the religious neutrality of theoretical thought? »(Herman Dooyeweerd, from Foreword, First Edition, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Amsterdam, 1935. PDFs of the 4 volumes of this work and of most other works by Dooyeweerd can be freely downloaded by visiting this site: https://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com/
So in summary we note Van Til’s key failure to appreciate Dooyeweerd’s use of the terms “religious” and “heart”. Van Til speaks of “our own puzzlement with Dooyeweerd’s position” and disparagingly remarks that “Dooyeweerd speaks of his confessional Calvinism as a religious rather than as a doctrinal position” . Van Til in effect accuses Dooyeweerd of being mystical, non-conceptual, and thus non-Biblical.
Dooyeweerd responds: “In my various explanations of the transcendental critique both within and outside my work ‘A New Critique of Theoretical Thought’, I have always emphasized its biblical starting-point. What, then, so I ask myself again, may have made you think that this critique would be not “directly” dependent upon the transcendent “biblical truths?” It seems to me that it is again a certain rationalistic view of the divine Word-revelation that hinders you from seeing the fundamental difference and the true relation between the central religious and the theoretical-conceptual sphere of knowledge.”
And surely as a counter-accusation, Dooyeweerd suggests that it is not himself but Van Til who is straying into the mystical: “This rationalism implies also a relapse into a metaphysical theory of the intrinsical divine being and its attributes, which Calvin called a “vacua et meteorica speculatio.[“empty and flighty speculation” (Inst. I,10,2)]
Fearghas.
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POSTSCRIPT
I always think of posting these kind of things being like "bread on the waters" as the Bible says somewhere. In other words, posted without preconceptions about whatever spiritual beachcomber might or might not find of interest this item that the tide has washed in.
A fascinating connection...
This morning as I sat in the service listening to F's and I's deeply poignant testimonies, I was noticing through the church windows the breeze so strongly stirring the leaves of the close-by trees and bushes, and there came to mind something Dooyeweerd says above.
Dooyeweerd wrote:
« The Bible does not speak of this religious center [ie our human heart] in conceptual terms, no more than Jesus in his night conversation with Nicodemus gave a conceptual circumscription of rebirth as the necessary condition of seeing the kingdom of God. »
Dooyeweerd is of course referring to the episode in JOHN 3:
« Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him."
Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."
"How can someone be born when they are old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born!"
Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'
"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit"
"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony."
"I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" » (JOHN 3: 1-12)
I realise now that the conversation Dooyeweerd was having with Van Til is precisely the same conversation Jesus was having with Nicodemus!...
To be clear what I mean...
Both Dooyeweerd and Van Til were certainly "born again", but Dooyeweerd was saying that Van Til's desire for abstract theoretical explanation of the Bible's view of the "heart" wasn't possible — anymore than was that of the heart’s “rebirth”, which is a concrete dynamic event beyond conceptual abstraction - as ungraspable as the wind (pneuma = spirit) blowing through the trees.
Fearghas.
SEE ALSO:
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