ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD
(1) Supratemporal Heart:
“We are even now in eternity”
ADOLPH SAPHIR (1831-1891)
Short Bio:
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)]
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“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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