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HERMAN DOOYEWEERD:
UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP OF CHRIST
(Extract from ‘Christian Philosophy: An Exploration’ by Herman Dooyeweerd)
For what did Kuyper mean when he again brought out in the open the reformational principle which animated Calvin and which he taught was life-embracing? What moved him, against every dualistic division between a “Christian” and “worldly” domain, to call for recognition of the universal Kingship of Christ in all areas of life?
His deepest concern was for a life and thought rooted in the central unity of Holy Scripture which is above the divergence of human ideas and interpretations. It is above them because it does not proceed from the human being but rather, as the spiritual driving force (dynamis) of the divine Word, takes possession of a person and demands unconditional self-surrender. The central operation of that spiritual dynamis affects the human heart, by attraction or by repulsion, prior to any theoretical reflection of the human mind. The possessive grip on the heart of human existence must be imparted from this central base to every orientation of thought and life.
The focus of concern here is not just the individual but the fellowship of the new community rooted in Christ; it is the kingdom of God which is restlessly at war with the kingdom of darkness. The whole world in all of its varying sectors is the arena for this struggle, a struggle which spreads out from its religious root in the human heart to the whole of life in time.
God has not abandoned his creation to the spirit of apostasy. The creation is His. It is subject to His absolute sovereignty. For that reason the central dynamic grip of the Word of God affects not only the personal life of the Christian, nor only the church as an institutional fellowship, but all human social relationships, politics, culture, science, and philosophy.
The recognition of the radical and integral significance of the Christian religion should not be presented as a specifically calvinistic point of view. Rather, the significance of the Christian religion irresistibly forces itself upon us from within the central ground-motive of Holy Scripture: that of creation, fall, and redemption through Christ Jesus in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. When that acknowledgement makes way for the acceptance of an “autonomy” of the “natural” or “worldly” life, it is exclusively due to the influence of unbiblical motives.
Kuyper penetrated beyond the theological and philosophical issues of the day to the deepest and absolutely central spiritual forces that set human life and thought in motion. These forces cannot be considered to be on the level of theoretical or scientific problems, because all theoretical reflection is already in their grip before it gets under way. These central spiritual ground-motives are disclosed in their true nature only when a person is inwardly transformed by the Word in which God reveals himself to human beings and leads them to the discovery of themselves.
In the aggravation, the scandal (“skandalon”) of this disclosure, which culminates in the cross of Golgotha, is revealed the crisis of an unavoidable conflict between the spirit of apostasy and the spiritual dynamis of the Word of God which exposes everyone. Here, in the utterly central sphere of religion, the final antithesis becomes manifest, one that demands an unavoidable choice of position in the life and thought of a person.
By following Abraham Kuyper in this purely biblical line of thought, the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea [Dutch “wetsidee” = “law-idea”] accepts that by virtue of the central, radical, and integral ground-motive of Holy Scripture (i.e., that of creation-fall-redemption by Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word), “the key of knowledge” is not dependent on human beings; instead, it takes command over them. Its radical spiritual meaning is directly revealed to humankind by operation of the Holy Spirit and not through the intermediary of a fallible theological exegesis of a number of Bible texts and of a system of theological dogmatics. Knowledge of this radical meaning is a realization gained through confession, not a conclusion drawn as a result of theological reflection.
(Extract from essay ‘Christian Philosophy: An Exploration’, from volume ‘Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History’, Herman Dooyeweerd, Paideia Press, Series B, Volume 13, 2013, pp 2,3)
Go here for free PDFs of this and other books by Herman Dooyeweerd:
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See also posts:
HUMAN SELFHOOD AS SUPRA-TEMPORAL HEART: “Supra-rational” is not “Irrational” (Dooyeweerd to Van Til)
