DEEP CALLS TO DEEP | ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (3) Abstraction & The Offence of the Cross

 

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD

(3) Abstraction & The Offence of the Cross 

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Adolph Saphir writes 

('Christ and the Scriptures', 1864): 

"The Messiah, the sin-bearing Lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ and its efficacy, the kingdom of Israel, all the great, substantial, and glorious truths of the so-called “New Testament” have been often converted into Japhetic [Hellenistic, European] abstractions, in the well-meant hope of making them thereby accessible, plausible, and practical, to the Occidental mind. But in reality the offence of the cross is the ultimate source of this procedure. “Salvation is of the Jews" and to Gentilise (Platonise) Jewish facts and ideas, is to falsify the Gospel, in order to please the Greeks who desire wisdom. Our theology (even that of believers) is far too abstract, unhistorical; looking at doctrines logically, instead of viewing them in connection with the history of the Kingdom and the Church. It is Japhetic, not Shemitic, it is Roman, logical, well-arranged, methodized, and scheduled; not Eastern according to the spirit and method of Scripture, which breathes in the atmosphere of a living God, who visits his people, and is coming again to manifest his glory. 

"[…] Most of the divergences from scriptural truth in our days have their origin in the attempt to translate Shemitic ideas into Japhetic language, or to interpret the doctrine of the apostles, not according to Moses and the prophets, but according to philosophy. 

"[…] A strict analysis of the teaching of this school shows that we have here a more serious and important change than the substitution of a vague, metaphysical terminology for the concrete and simple words of Scripture. Here is a radical subversion of Bible teaching, eliminating its supernatural character, and thereby destroying its simplicity and power. Thus, the doctrine of substitution, the peculiar importance assigned to the blood in connection with expiation, both in the law of Moses and throughout the apostolic writings, is especially repugnant to the Japhetic European mode of thought. Translated into our philosophical language, what remains of the “offence of the Cross” — that Cross which is the power of God? 

"[…] We have nowadays a popular Christianity; and we know that the Gospel is not popular, but an offence to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks.” 

(Adolph Saphir, 'Christ and the Scriptures' pp 60, 150-153)

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Herman Dooyeweerd writes:

 

('A New Critique of Theoretical Thought', 1969):

"At this point, many a reader who has taken the trouble to follow our argument will perhaps turn away annoyed. He will ask: Must epistemology end in a Christian sermon or in a dogmatic statement? I can only answer by means of the question as to whether the dogmatic statement with which the supposed autonomous epistemology opens, viz. the proclamation of the self-sufficiency of the human cognitive functions, has a better claim to our confidence as far as epistemology is concerned.

"Our philosophy makes bold to accept the "stumbling block of the cross of Christ" as the corner stone of epistemology (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 (1 Ephes 1:10), and through Him according to His Divine nature, God created all things as through the Word of his power (2 Heb 1:2, 3).

"The primary lie obfuscating the horizon of human experience is the rebellious thought that man could do without this knowledge of God and of himself in any field of knowledge, and could find the ultimate criterion of truth in 'autonomous', i.e. absolutized theoretical thought."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, "New Critique of Theoretical Thought" Vol II pp 562-563)

(The Essence of Christianity by Herman Dooyeweerd, 1942):

"[...] To talk about the essence of Christianity is especially meaningful in our day. Many people barely know what the Christian religion really stands for. That is because of the many caricatures that Christianity has undergone over the centuries. Mankind has always been out to escape its radical claims by adjusting and accommodating it to the religious ground-motives that first governed Greco-Roman civilization and later modern humanistic culture.

Those attempts at accommodation first saw Greek philosophy wrap itself like a parasite around the Christian tenets of faith. In modern times it has been Humanism’s religion of reason and personality that has undermined Christian beliefs by interpreting them in a humanistic spirit. In the eyes of many, the essence of Christianity was reduced to a doctrine of morality: the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man based on the rational belief in God, virtue and immortality. Christ was recognized only as the ideal man, the exalted example of virtue and self-sacrifice.

[...] 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."

(The Essence of Christianity by Herman Dooyeweerd, 1942. Translated by Harry Van Dyke.)

(Herman Dooyeweerd: 

‘Sin and the dialectical conception of guilt 

in Greek and Humanistic philosophy.’):

“Both the Greek and the Humanistic oppositions do not touch the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] root of human existence, but only the temporal branches of human life. They are only absolutized here in a religious [ie in a hypostasing, idolatrous] sense. Their concept of guilt, in consequence, is of a merely dialectical [logically contradictory] character. It consists of a depreciation of an abstract complex of functions of the created cosmos over against another abstracted and deified complex.

In its revelation of the fall, however, just like in that of creation, the Word of God penetrates to the root, to the religious  [ultimate, supratemporal] 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 [ultimate, supratemporal] root only in mankind. Every conception which denies this radical [radix] sense of the fall, (even though it uses the term "radical" as in KANT'S conception of the "radical evil" in man), is diametrically opposed to the basic motive of Holy Scripture. Since, as we have seen, the revelation of the fall does not in any way mean the recognition of an antithetic principle of origin which is opposed to the Creator, sin cannot be thought of as standing in a dialectical relation to the creation.

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 [ie involving all temporal reality and physicality] 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 ultimate, supratemporal “radix”] 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 mankind. Consequently, the struggle of the Kingdom of God continues to be waged against the kingdom of darkness until the "consommatio saeculi" [“consummation of the ages”].

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 175)

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DEEP CALLS TO DEEP | ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (2) Influence of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger?

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD

(2) Influence of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger? 

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General Contextual Note

(by J Glenn Friesen): 

‘Abraham Kuyper expresses the wish that modernism would have allowed itself to be led by Franz von Baader to the “Biblical realism” of the Incarnation, as expressed in the life-giving proverb “Embodiment is the goal of the ways of God.”. The original maxim is by Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782), one of Baader’s influences. Oetinger refers to the ‘works’ of God instead of the ‘ways’ of God: “Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes.” The theologian Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye introduced Baader’s Christian theosophy [no connection with Madame Blavatsky (FMF)] to Reformed theology in the Netherlands. His son said that he saw Chantepie de la Saussaye go about every day with the writings of Oetinger, Hamann and Baader.’ (‘Neo-Calvinism and Christian Theosophy: Franz von Baader, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd', [Kindle] by J. Glenn Friesen, 2015/2016, pp 76, 94) 

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Note on Johann Georg HAMANN (1730-1788) 

(by Herman Dooyeweerd): 

In his book Christ and the Scriptures (pages 106 & 138), Saphir quotes Hamann, a friend of Kant and translator of David HUME into German. 

Herman Dooyeweerd writes of Hamann: 

“This irrational philosophy of feeling, predominating especially in Hamann, the young Herder and Jacobi, and of which Goethe makes his Faust the mouth-piece in the utterance: ‘Gefühl ist alles’, is the true Humanistic counter-pole of the rationalistic line of thought characteristic of the ‘Enlightenment’ […] Rationalism and irrationalism in their modern sense are merely polar contrasts in the basic structure of the Humanistic cosmonomic Idea. The tension, the inner antinomy that originates for the irrationalist types between absolutized subjective individuality and law, led HAMANN and early romanticism to a dialectical conception of reality which ascribed the character of absolute reality to logical contradiction.” (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 1 [Direct 608-pages pdf download] pp 412, 510)

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Note on 

Friedrich Christoph OETINGER (1702–1782)

and Adolph SAPHIR (1831-1891) 

(by Rev Dr Ian Maxwell, Church of Scotland):

Oetinger is an interesting Biblical commentator. He was writing in the mid 18th century in Germany, but almost all of his works were republished in the early 19th century, following Gustav Auberlen's work on Oetinger's thought. Saphir had written the English translation of Auberlen's work on the prophetic relation between Daniel and Revelation, which T & T Clark published (1854?). 

Saphir was chiefly interested in Oetinger's book Etwas Ganzes vom Evangelio which had been republished in a new German edition in 1850. The book consists of a collection of writings and papers by Oetinger. One significant study is on Isaiah 40-66. Rather than theologise, Oetinger carefully works through each chapter of Deutero-Isaiah, producing a single term summary of each chapter. He then brings the summaries together into three main themes: Belief (Isaiah 40-49); Righteousness (50-59); and Glory (60-66). At this point he links Belief, Righteousness and Glory to major themes in the Epistles. However, he states that he will not summarise to a higher level, as this bordered on abstraction. 

So, there are three essential levels in Oetinger's study: the text of Scripture; a single term summary of a chapter of the text of Scripture; and a final single term uniting the chapter summaries. This, he declared, was the final limit, since abstraction lay beyond.

In Christ and the Scriptures, the Saphir quotes of Oetinger are from the Notes concerning Catechetical Teaching (one of the works included in Etwas Ganzes), and Auberlen's work on Oetinger.

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SAPHIR's OETINGER QUOTES 

COMPARED with DOOYEWEERD

We observe, therefore, that in Adolph Saphir's Christ and the Scriptures, it is to Friedrich Christoph OETINGER (1702–1782) that Saphir most frequently turns for affinity (pp 112, 114, 115). In this blogpost we will juxtapose these Oetinger quotes with the stated views of Herman Dooyeweerd. To that end we will group our comparisons under the following three themes:

1) 'Scripture and Abstraction', 

2) 'Heart, Root, Branches, and 

3) 'Lookout Tower & Biblical Ground-Motive'.

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THEME 1) 

SCRIPTURE AND ABSTRACTION 

SAPHIR QUOTES OETINGER: 

‘We all must agree with the quaint remarks of old Oetinger: “The writers of Scripture observe all rules without having rules, because their word proceeds from Life; they never bring forth old things without new, which have never been thus uttered. They avoid abstract definitions like a pestilence; they clothe their ideas and give them a body, but such a body as never misleads us to the sensual.”’

DOOYEWEERD WRITES: 

“It is human personality that operates in cognition; it is not one or more of its abstracted modal functions. In its religious root this personality transcends its temporal acts and modal functions. This holds good no matter whether the cosmological self-consciousness, in the cognitive activity, is directed in Christ to the true Origin of all things, to the sovereign Creator and Heavenly Father, or, in sinful apostasy, seeks itself and the Origin in the temporal. (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 2 pp 473, 474). 

“Thus the central theme of the Holy Scriptures, namely, that of creation, fall into sin, and redemption by Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit, has a radical unity of meaning, which is related to the central unity of our human existence. It effects the true knowledge of God and ourselves, if our heart is fully opened by the Holy Spirit so that it finds itself in the grip of God's Word and has become the captive of Jesus Christ. So long as this central meaning of the Word-revelation is at issue, we are beyond the scientific problems both of theology and philosophy. Its acceptance or rejection is a matter of life or death to us, and not a question of theoretical reflection. In this sense, the central motive of Holy Scripture is the common supra-scientific starting-point of a truly biblical theology and of a truly Christian philosophy. It is the key of knowledge of which Jesus spoke in his discussion with the Scribes and lawyers. It is the religious presupposition of any theoretical thought which may rightly claim a biblical foundation. But, as such, it can never become the theoretical object of theology - no more than God and the human I can become such an object.

“...I am sorry if my explanation concerning the scientific field of research of dogmatic theology seem not clear at first sight. The difficulties and questions to which it gives rise do not concern the divine Word-revelation, but exclusively the scientific character and bounds of a theological dogmatics and exegesis. And it is necessary 'ad humanam salutem' to go into these difficulties in a serious way. For dogmatic theology is a very dangerous science. Its elevation to a necessary mediator between God's Word and the believer amounts to idolatry and testifies to a fundamental misconception concerning its real character and position. If our salvation be dependent on theological dogmatics and exegesis, we are lost. For both of them are a human work, liable to all kinds of error, disagreement in opinion, and heresy. We can even say that all heresies are of a theological origin. Therefore, the traditional confusion between God's Word as the central principle of knowledge and the scientific object of theological dogmatics and exegesis must be wrong in its fundamentals. For it is this very confusion which has given rise to the false identification of dogmatic theology with the doctrine of Holy Scripture, and to the false conception of theology as the necessary mediator between God's Word and the believers.

“[...]Let us first consider how the Word of God presents itself to us in its full and actual reality. The divine Word-revelation has entered our temporal horizon. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. This was the 'skandalon' which was equally raised by the incarnation of the Word-revelation in the Holy Scriptures, a collection of books written by different men in the course of ages, be it through divine inspiration, yet related to all the modal aspects of our temporal horizon of experience. It is, however, only under the modal aspect of faith that we can experience that this Word-revelation in the Scriptures has been inspired by the Holy Spirit. And the actual belief through which we know with an ultimate certainty that it is so, cannot be realized in the heart, that religious center of our consciousness, except by the operation of the Word itself, as a spiritual power. What makes the diversity of books of the Old and New Testament into a radical spiritual unity? Their principle of unity can only be the central theme of creation, fall into sin, and redemption by Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit, since it is the key to true knowledge of God and self-knowledge. We have established that, in its central spiritual sense, as divine motive power addressing itself to our heart, this theme cannot become the theoretical object of theological thought, since it is the very starting point of the latter, insofar as theology is really biblical.

“From the foregoing it may appear that there must be a difference in principle between creation, fall and redemption in their central sense as the key to knowledge, and in their sense as articles of faith which may be made into the object of theological thought. Insofar as Reformed theology, too, was influenced by the scholastic basic motive of nature and grace, it also developed dogmatic views which must be considered unbiblical. The Jewish Scribes and lawyers had a perfect theological knowledge of the books of the Old Testament. They wished, doubtless, to hold to the creation, the fall, and the promise of the coming Messiah as articles of the orthodox Jewish faith which are also articles of the Christian faith. Nevertheless, Jesus said to them: "Woe unto you, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge!" (Luke 11:52).

“This key of knowledge in its radical and integral sense cannot be made into a theoretical problem. The theologian can only direct his theological thought to it with respect to its necessary supra-theoretical presupposition, if he is really in the grip of it and can bear witness to its radical meaning which transcends all theological concepts. But when he does so, he is not in any different position than the Christian philosopher who accounts for his biblical starting-point, or the ordinary believer who testifies to the radical sense of God's Word as the central motive power of his life in Jesus Christ. In other words, the true knowledge of God in Jesus Christ and true self-knowledge are neither of a dogmatic-theological, nor of a philosophical nature, but have an absolutely central religious [ultimate, supratemporal] significance. This knowledge is a question of spiritual life or death. Even orthodox theological dogmatics, however splendidly elaborated, cannot guarantee this central spiritual knowledge.” (Herman Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought [direct pdf download], from pp 86,87, 100, 134-146).

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THEME 2) 

HEART, ROOT, BRANCHES 

SAPHIR QUOTES OETINGER: 

“Scripture moves, describes, convinces. In Isaiah we have not formal sentences, but real addresses, which re-echo in the heart, calling on us to be comforted by God’s redemption: 'Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! All is full of the nearness of God’s Spirit: ‘Fear not, I am with thee.' The apostolic men had not the habit of prefixing their theme, even as a painter would not write above his picture of a horse, “This is a horse;’ and because divisions are chiefly of use to the learned, the prophets had another method of fastening the great points as nails into the heart, so that people did not require the art of remembering but, as Themistocles said of his bad conscience, the art of forgetting. Isaiah has perfect divisions, but not as a geometrical plane is divided into squares, but as a man consists of members, and a tree of trunk and branches. (Selected from various works of this eminent theologian (Oetinger].’“ (p 114)

DOOYEWEERD SAYS: 

(transcribed from video interview translated by Jack Van Meggelen) 

“And suddenly, as it were by accident, one afternoon, just after four o’ clock, as I was sitting in Kuyper’s old office, sitting at his enormous old desk, I noticed a stack of little booklets, and I picked the first one that came to hand, which was Kuyper’s Meditation on Pentecost. I wouldn’t have done this earlier in my life, but I thought I should see what he said there, and I was still reading by eight o’ clock at night, I was so moved by Kuyper’s meditations. I realized that in these meditations Kuyper was very different from the one in his systematic work. In theology he can be somewhat scholastic, but not at all in these meditations. Here he expressed really lively Biblical thought. And what really gripped me was Kuyper’s rediscovery of something lost in scholasticism, that is the Biblical conception that the center of human existence lies in the heart. In the heart one’s existence is centered. The Bible uses ‘heart’ comprehensively. But the heart has often been considered the seat of the affections, and there is a common dichotomy between head and heart, where the head is intellect, and the heart is emotional feeling. But Kuyper says clearly in one of those meditations that he is speaking of the heart, but not as the organ of feeling, but rather as that central point of one’s existence where God works, that unified point where life is not yet in differentiated expression. He used the example of the root and the branches that stem from it. So not the various branches but the very root of our existence. In this sense, this is the Biblical use of the word ‘heart’. For me this was a clear turning point in my life, and as I reflected on it, I realized that this insight overturned my whole view of man, and my whole view of the reality in which we live, since all reality has in humanity a central point of concentration. And when it comes to the question of man’s self-knowledge, once again, a topic of great interest, What is the Self? What does it mean when one says “I”? And Calvin, in his book ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’ [cf Chapter 1], speaks of true self-knowledge as completely dependent on true knowledge of God. And this is the heart of the matter, since, if the self is this center, the heart of our existence, a center of all our temporal capabilities and functions, of thinking, of feeling, of biological life, if all these are related to the center, all focused there; so “I” believe, “I” think, “I” feel, “I” live, and all these functions of living, thinking, believing, feeling, and so forth, all of these are unified in the “I” as their center, indeed, as the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] center.’

View full 15 min interview (1973) in Dutch with English subtitles here: 

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THEME 3) 

LOOKOUT TOWER & 

BIBLICAL GROUND-MOTIVE 

SAPHIR QUOTES OETINGER: 

“Scripture sees all things from a great height, therefore the expressions it uses are according to a different measure and perspective from those of the world, for which reason to the world the Scripture seems exaggerated. This absolute and perfect view and measure of Scripture, which we ought always to regard as the standard of all our thoughts and words, may be specially noticed in the Scripture description of the creation, redemption, and the end of all things. How paradoxical and above nature!*(*Oetinger, friend of Bengel, who died in 1782, as Prelate of the Würtemberg Church in Murrhardt. Etwas Ganzes vom Evangelio, p148)”.

DOOYEWEERD WRITES:

“The Archimedean point of philosophy and the tendency of philosophical thought towards the Origin: To speak in a figure: In the process of directing my philosophical thought in the idea towards the totality of meaning, I must be able to ascend a lookout-tower above all the modal speciality of meaning that functions within the coherence of the modal aspects. From this tower I must be able to survey this coherence with all the modal diversity of meaning included in it. Here I must find the point of reference to which this modal diversity can be related, and to which I am to return in the process of reflecting thought. In other words, if I am not to lose myself in the modal speciality of meaning during the course of philosophic thought, I must be able to find a standpoint which transcends the special modal aspects. Only by transcending the speciality of meaning, can I attain to the actual view of totality by which the former is to be distinguished as such. This fixed point from which alone, in the course of philosophical thought, we are able to form the idea of the totality of meaning, we call the Archimedean point of philosophy.” (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought VOL 1 p8)

“Since the fall and the promise of the coming Redeemer, there are two central mainsprings operative in the heart of human existence. The first is the dynamis of the Holy Spirit, which by the moving power of God's Word, incarnated in Jesus Christ, re-directs to its Creator the creation that had apostatized in the fall from its true Origin. This dynamis brings man into the relationship of sonship to the Divine Father. Its religious [time-transcending] ground-motive is that of the Divine Word-Revelation, which is the key to the understanding of Holy Scripture: the motive of creation, fall, and redemption by Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit.” (A New Critique of Theoretical Thought  VOL 1 p61) [Direct 608-pages pdf download] 

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(FMF Dec 2020)

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP | ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (1) Supratemporal Heart: “We are even now in eternity”

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD

(1) Supratemporal Heart: 

“We are even now in eternity”

ADOLPH SAPHIR (1831-1891) 

Short Bio:

Adolph Saphir was born in Pesth in Hungary in 1831 into an orthodox Jewish family. The family were converted in 1841 through the Biblical preaching of the Church of Scotland missionaries Dr Keith and, especially, Dr John 'Rabbi' Duncan. Saphir was, then, a messianic Jew, or Hebrew Christian as it was termed in the 19th century. He attended the Berlin Gymnasium from 1844 to 1848 and was trilingual in classical Hebrew, German and English. Invited to Scotland by the Free Church he attended Glasgow University in 1849, moved to Aberdeen University to study theology and in late 1851 he began theological studies with the Free Church at New College, Edinburgh. He was awarded a D.D. from Edinburgh University in 1875 for his theological work. Saphir was a Biblical theologian whose distinctiveness lay in his Christocentric Biblical theology, coupled with a positive, non-polemical understanding of Biblical inspiration and the methodological use of Biblical-relational ideas found in Scripture. (Info, with appreciation, from lost internet source)

Adolph Saphir writes ('Christ and the Scriptures', 1864): 

“The chief purpose, however, is, according to the spirit of parabolic teaching, to impress on us that we are even now in eternity; that everywhere we are surrounded by the same God; that the invisible kingdom is manifested in the visible; that God, and his truth, and his righteousness, are the true reality and substance.” (Christ and the Scriptures, 1869, p98)

[“Het hoofddoel evenwel is, volgens de aard van het parabolisch onderricht, ons te doordringen van het feit, dat wij reeds nu in de eeuwigheid zijn” (Christ und de Schriften, (pdf) translated by A.R. Zalman Marda, 2010, p60)]

 [“Ihr Hauptzweck ist jedoch, dem Geiste der biblischen Offenbarung entsprechend, uns einzuprägen, daß wir schon jetzt in der Ewigkeit leben” (Christus und dei Schrift, translated by J von Lancizolle 1882, p92)]

[“‘S e am prìomh amas, ge-tà, a rèir spiorad an teagaisg pharabalaich, gu bhith stèinneadh dhuinn gu bheil sinn san t-sìorraidheachd an dràsta fhèin.” (Crìosd agus na Sgriobtairean)]

*   *   *

“In the Bible we breathe the atmosphere of eternity...We may also say that He, who alone knows the human heart, is alone able to speak to the heart of man; and while other writings are pre-eminently logical and imaginative, or addressed to the conscience and feelings, Scripture speaks to man, to “all that is in him” (Ps. ciii:1), to the inmost and hidden centre, from which proceed all thoughts, words, and works. This penetrating peculiarity of the Scripture style is another feature of its Divine origin. Scripture speaks to the heart of man (Isaiah xl:1, Heb). That means, not merely to speak so as to influence the will and rouse strong feelings, but to reveal the secrets of the heart (1 Cor. xiv:25; Jer. xvii:10; Prov xv:11), and to fill its desire for eternity with something perfect. Scripture represents the heart as a little world. When the man of God speaks, his word seizes a hundred elements in this little world; what was hidden is brought out, the false imaginations are brought to shame, and despair cries for help and seeks anchorage. The heart feels the difference between a human and a Divine word.” (Christ and the Scriptures, 1869, pp112,113)

HERMAN DOOYEWEERD (1894-1977)

Context note by J Glenn Friesen: 

“In 1937, both Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven were asked by the Curators of the Vrije Universiteit to respond to accusations about their philosophy, which had been made by the theologian Valentijn Hepp (1879-1950) in a series of brochures that he published entitled Dreigende Deformatie [Threatening Deformation]. Hepp said that the new philosophy threatened the Confessions of Faith of the reformed churches. He argued that the new philosophy showed a ‘sickness of originality” [oorspronkelijkheidsziekte].” 

Herman Dooyeweerd writes 

(Second Letter to the Curators, 1937): 

[The following extracts (translated by Friesen) are from Dooyeweerd’s Response to the Curators, 2nd letter, addressing Hepp’s contention that Dooyeweerd’s view of humanity’s relation to eternity was contrary to reformed orthodoxy]

‘In my view it is indeed the case [that in our heart we also transcend and go out above time]. If that were not so, then the undeniable sense of eternity in man’s heart could not be explained, and it would indeed be difficult to maintain the continued identical existence of the “soul” after bodily death. […] For in the last day, the “soul,” unlike the “body,” does not need to be “resurrected” [opgewekt]’.’

‘In the text that I have brought forward, Ecclesiastes 3:11 ["He has also set eternity in the human heart"], my highly esteemed colleague [Valentijn Hepp] finds no argument for the supratemporality of the heart. And I concede without reservation that the recitation of a text may not be called a “proof text” (however that was intended to mean anyway!). It is indeed possible that there can be various views regarding its meaning, although in all modesty it appears to me that it would be difficult for the word ‘heart’ here to have a sense other than the “religious center of life.”

‘According to my modest opinion, and in the light of the whole Scriptural revelation concerning human nature it is just this possession of a supratemporal root of life, with the simultaneous subjectedness to time of all its earthly expressions, that together belong to the essence [wezen] of man, to the “image of God” in him – by means of which he is able to not only relatively but radically [in radix/root] go out [uitgaat] above all temporal things. And that is how I also understand Ecclesiastes 3:11.

‘‘If in fact man’s heart were also a “temporal thing” among other temporal things, then it would be difficult for this heart to know of the supratemporal. In order to have a religious sense [besef] of eternity, man must in the depths of his being participate in it, although our thinking always remains subjected to time.” [Footnote: ‘I of course do not need to again expressly tell my colleague that this does not relate to “aeternitas”, which applies only to God, but rather to the creaturely aevum, the created supratemporality.’] [Footnote: 'the heart, just like the body, is created, and thus does not exist from eternity.’]

‘This holds absolutely, not only for believers, as my colleague apparently tries to interpret my view, but for every man as such. The [unbeliever’s] sense of eternity expresses itself in the falling away from God only in an idolatrous direction. Men [idolatrously] seek themselves, i.e. the supratemporal center of their existence, together with their God, in the temporal. For example, Aristotle in his doctrine of the immortal and supratemporal substantial form of man (“reason”). I have discussed this point in detail in Volume II Part I of my book [Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee]. There is thus no need, as my colleague suggests at the top of page 13 of his note, that the Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, in order to be consistent, “really would have to introduce a division between temporal and supratemporal hearts.”’

‘[…] That Mr Hepp sees the Scriptural conception of the “human heart,” the religious center of all of human existence, as “a sphinx” which he says belongs in the desert, is not more than a witticism without much style, by which he certainly does not strengthen his position in the present debate. The human heart will remain a “sphinx” as long as he intends to seek a fixed standpoint in “reason,” outside of God’s Word. By doing that, the “heart” will indeed remain in the “desert” of philosophical speculations.’

(Dooyeweerd: Response to the Curators, 2nd letter, (pdf) p34, 35, translated by J Glenn Friesen)

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