Our Archimedean point itself finds anchorage in the Living God to Whom "we draw near with a sincere HEART" as ultimate ground and source of meaning, "firm and secure within the veil". Idolatry represents a doomed rebellious attempt to find anchorage and ultimate personal and cosmic integration somewhere within abstract theory or within time. (Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh)
Dooyeweerd writes:
"It follows that true self-knowledge is the primary condition for truly critical philosophical reflection. For where the self seeks its reliable ground and origin, that is where the Archimedean point of its philosophy is. Once we have understood this state of affairs, we can only conclude that the idea of the immanent self-sufficiency of theoretical thought betrays a lack of veritable critical self-reflection. The choice of the Archimedean point cannot be purely theoretical, for it is only the thinker himself who is able to make this choice. Rather than theoretical this choice is a religious act. In this act theoretical thought is concentrated upon that which is accepted by the thinking self as the ultimate root and self-sufficient origin of the cosmos.
This self, which in Holy Scripture is called the heart, from which life springs, is subject to the restless search for its own origin and that of the entire cosmos. This is the religious law of concentration, which even on the immanence–standpoint does not lose its sway. This unrest, issuing from man’s heart, affects philosophical thought, which in its tendency towards origin and totality cannot but point beyond its own immanent limits towards its ultimate religious Root and its Origin.
The philosophical ground-idea is the foundation of all philosophy. It is the ultimate theoretical limiting idea in which this tendency towards origin and totality comes to expression. When we reflect upon it, we get to the necessary presuppositions of all philosophical thought.
By the light of God´s revelation in Jesus Christ we do not regard the immanence standpoint as a natural premise for the Christian transcendence standpoint, but rather as a radical defection (apostasy) from the genuine self and from the true origin of all things. Thus we regard it as a falling away from the reliable ground and Origin of truth. The self that seeks a reliable ground in its theoretical thinking has fallen away from its true nature. In the end it identifies itself with its thought-abstraction. By so doing, it stumbles into the temporal diversity of meaning, where it is being dispersed. It can then only find its concentration in an absolutization, that is to say, a deification of something created."
Excerpted from "The Dilemma for Christian Philosophical Thought & the Critical Character of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea (Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee)" by Herman Dooyeweerd (Translated by Chris van Haeften) [SEE HERE]
