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| ‘Old Woman Reading’ (Rembrandt van Rijn, 1631) |
| [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]. |
If anyone approaches Scripture from another religious ground-motive, not even the most extensive theological knowledge of Scripture will protect them from using Scripture in an unscriptural manner. For this simple reason, no intrinsically Reformed philosophy can ever take its starting point in the science of theology. Indeed, a genuinely Scriptural theology can only arise from the ground-motive of Scripture itself.
To remove palingenesis [rebirth - which embraces both the individual and all creation] as an active force from the foundations of the Reformed worldview and Reformed scholarship spells grave danger. It would cause the ground-motive of Scripture to degenerate into a theoretical “principle” for one’s life and thought — a principle which in essence stems from a rationalistic deification of reason, even though the thinker may not be aware of this. Even palingenesis itself would then be turned into something theoretical, that is to say, into a purely theological doctrine. It would, with theoretical detachment, be reduced to our logical function of thought, without having transformed our thinking at its root.
This degeneration can occur unnoticed even among those who place the greatest emphasis on the Scriptural character of their thought. For this reason, the reformational principle is a critical religious principle that becomes active in our thought not through theology, but through the Spirit (Pneuma) of the church of Christ by the Word of God itself.’
