Pierre Marcel : Philosophie Chrétienne de Herman Dooyeweerd

Philosophie Chrétienne 

de Herman Dooyeweerd 

(Vol.1) 

par Pierre Marcel

Édité par Colin Wright

Librairie Jean Calvin

25,65 €

" Pierre Marcel nous livre dans ces deux volumes consacrés à la pensée de Dooyeweerd l'une des rares introductions, en français, à ce philosophe. La complexité et la richesse de la pensée de Dooyweerd invite à une réflexion profonde et sérieuse. La dimension holistique de cette pensée, touchant à tous les aspects de la vie humaine, procure une vision globale de la présence de la foi chrétienne dans le société. "

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Ces livres en anglais

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Pierre Marcel c 1983

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Dooyeweerd: Individuality Structures, Metaphysics, Classical Darwinism as Theoretic Magic Trick

DOOYEWEERD's 15 IRREDUCIBLE LAW-SPHERES 

(Also called Aspects/ Modes/ Modalities/ Meaning-sides)

Dooyeweerd: Individuality Structures, Metaphysics, Classical Darwinism as Theoretic Magic Trick

(Extracts fom Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy’ Vol II, pp 232-236)

[NB green text inserts within square brackets are by FMF]

The Law-Idea and the 
individuality structures of reality.

[pp 230-232] Because of its theoretical character, the Law-Idea is primarily an idea of how things differentiate in their modal aspects [see law-sphere chart above] within our horizon of time.

In this respect it pointedly joins the structure of the theoretic Gegenstand relation, which primarily arises by separating the aspects [law-spheres] and by placing the logical aspect [Analytical law-sphere] in opposition to the non-logical ones.

As we shall see, from a theoretical point of view, distinguishing the modal aspects [law-spheres] is fundamental for all other further philosophical investigation, even though this distinction demands a transcendental idea of their radical unity.

But philosophical thought cannot halt at an analysis of the modal structures. Since concrete reality is founded on typical structures of individuality, we must now try to penetrate to the individuality structures which ground concrete reality. The Gegenstand relation itself demands to be directed towards what is concrete, if it is not to ignore what is pre-given and which makes it possible in the first place.

Reality presents itself to human consciousness only in typical individuality structures, never in modal [law-sphere] abstractions. We must therefore submit these individuality structures to an analysis in the Gegenstand relation if theoretic thought is indeed to disclose reality theoretically.

This means that we must also direct our idea of the law toward these structures, if it is to maintain itself as the transcendental basic idea of philosophic thinking.

These individuality structures too, as soon as they are placed in the Gegenstand relation, pose a real transcendental problem for philosophic thought that can never be solved in a purely theoretical way and is closely related to the problem raised by the analysis of the the modal structures.

We can formulate this problem again as that of unity in relation to the diversity exposed by our theory, a problem which not a single philosophic school can avoid, since it emerges automatically from the Gegenstand relation itself.

In individuality structures, however, this problem displays an especially complicated character. As we saw earlier, the reason is that individuality structures span all modal aspects [law-spheres] and yet are structures of an individual whole [eg in Dooyeweerd's view humans are comprised of four “enkaptically” interlaced individuality structures: 1) physico-chemical, 2) biotic, 3) sensory, 4) act-structure].

What guarantees the intrinsic unity here? Is this unity absolute or relative by nature? Is it a unity above or within the diversity of aspects [law-spheres]?

The answer to these questions will decide the whole direction of our philosophic investigation of the typical structures of reality. It will depend on how we view the mutual relation and coherence of the various types of structures, and this in turn is determined by our deepest religious [ultimate] presuppositions concerning the basic unity and Origin of temporal reality.

And only the Law-Idea can give a critical theoretic account of these presuppositions.
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[p 232] Since our Law-Idea disclosed the time-horizon of reality as seen from the radical unity and Origin of all modal structures, we were able to avoid making any modal aspect [law-sphere] into an absolute.

The modal unity appeared to be merely a modal expression of the continuity of cosmic time. We found it to be a modal structure in time which guarantees structural coherence but not unity of origin. Still, unity comes first, also in the idea of the modal structure.

This fundamental unity itself, which is a priori in the ontological sense of the word, cannot be analyzed theoretically, since this unity, as we now know, is an ontic presupposition for all scientific analysis.
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Contra Metaphysics.

[p 233] The individual structures are not given to us outside of cosmic time and are, as our further investigation will show, only possible within time and through time. They lose all validity beyond the horizon of time.

As soon as one loses sight of this, philosophic thinking is always driven toward a speculative metaphysics, which pretends it can raise theoretic thinking with its abstractions above the horizon of time and so ends up declaring independent what is relative.

Metaphysics does not establish the relationship between on the one hand all things that are relative within time and on the other their radical unity and their absolute Origin which, as our transcendental critique has demonstrated, is a transcendental precondition for all philosophic thinking.

But the defect of the metaphysical way of thinking is its failure to understand that it itself is determined at a pre-theoretical level and that it mistakes intrinsically religious [ultimate] prejudices for purely theoretical conclusions and in the process elevates theoretical abstractions to the level of supra-temporal substantial entities.

For that reason alone the Philosophy of the Law-Idea has become the radical adversary of metaphysical thought, and certainly not in order to curry the favor of positivism, which itself is rooted in a dogmatic metaphysical view of science.

The individuality structures include all individual reality within cosmic time. Like the modal [law-sphere] structures, they form a universal horizon for all that exists or occurs in time.

Full temporal reality always reveals its subject-side individually. And this individuality can only be realized in typical structures, which as law-types of individual totalities span all modal law-aspects [law-spheres] and arrange them in the unity of a typical structure.

The horizon of these structures is of an inexhaustible wealth, and every philosophic theory that tries to explain the individuality from a uniform principle and to reduce structural types to a few abstract schemes is objectionable from the start, because it sacrifices the wealth of God's creative wisdom to its passion for arbitrary constructions.

The humanist science-ideal and the tendency to dissolve the individuality structures in a closed system of modal relations. The classical phylogenetic doctrine in biology.

[pp 234-236] We must especially warn against the attempt of the humanistic science ideal to dissolve the individuality structures into modal relations, which one then believes one can put into a closed causal, or at least a logical, system. The modal [law-sphere] denominator under which the structures are brought then depends upon the synthetic [conceptual] viewpoint in the scientific discipline that one has made absolute as his Archimedean [integration] point. 

A typical example of such an aspiration is the classical doctrine of evolution, which Charles Darwin started (1859, 1871) and Ernst Haeckel worked out philosophically (1899) and which tried to fit all living organisms into one genetic tree, starting with protozoa (unicellular beings in the plant and animal realm) and ending with the human species.

Beginning with the unlimited variability of form-types, they attempted to arrange them in a biological system of development in which the most primitive evolved into the most highly developed forms of life in purely mechanical fashion. A process of natural selection of those most adapted in the struggle for survival, and the inheritance of acquired characteristics, was proposed for its explanation.

What immediately strikes us here from a philosophical point of view is that the unity of all life in the diversity of its typical forms of appearance is placed in the foreground. This was the strongest side of this theory of descent. Because this unity does indeed exist. 

However, it is modal in character. "Life" as such is not a thing but an attribute, a modal aspect [law-sphere] of temporal reality. Its nucleus of meaning returns in the structure of all later aspects [law-spheres] as an analogy [the structure of each law-sphere references all other law-spheres] and its unity of origin and fulfillment can only be found in the religious [ultimate] communion with God as the Fountain of all life.

We cannot reduce the immense diversity of the typical individuality structures [which always function within all law-spheres] to the purely modal unity of all of life [ie to an absolutised Biotic law-sphere - see pale blue band on above chart].

Unforeseen, evolutionism therefore reduces the modal unity to a material complex. "Life" is reduced to a material unity determined by physico-chemical processes; it is identified with the living protein of protoplasm, which in protists (“Protists”: a group of unicellular living entities) would crystallize into living individuals, and from that beginning it would in mechanistic fashion account for the rich enfolding of all the forms of a typical structure as mere varieties.

Here then begins the fundamental aberration of scientific thinking. For the problem of the individuality structure returns in the "protists." They are not pure modal units of life [ie impossibly reductionist products of the Biotic law-sphere] but individual living beings that [necessarily] function in all aspects [law-spheres] of reality when we reckon with the subject-object relation [which presents as concrete temporal reality].

The unity of their individuality structure and the unity of their individual existence as subject are not guaranteed by the unity of the modal structure of the life-aspect [ie Biotic law-sphere].

When it is evident that the typical totality structure of living beings cannot be reduced to each other and that a human being proves to be radically different from animal and plant already in its temporal existence [cf only humans have “act-structure”], how then can anyone in all seriousness believe that one can bridge these differences in structure in a purely biological [discrete single law-sphere] manner?

Indeed, how would one propose to reduce the typical differences in structure of the "protists" genetically to an original unity of structure? In order to bring off this theoretic trick of magic the really existing protists in the plant and animal world (the unicellular algae or protophytes and the unicellular amoeba or protozoa) would first have to be reduced genetically to a hypothetical proto-cell without nucleus, the so-called "moner." However, the existence of moners could not be demonstrated, yet they had to form the hypothetical "origin" of the genetic system of all living beings. They were the "proto-protists," which themselves were to be the individual crystallization products of living protein: crystals without any special shape or organization.

Haeckel did not know yet that every type of living organism produces its own type of protein, so that in the living protein, formed by cellular protoplasm, the problem of individuality structures returns immediately. In his day scientists had no idea yet of the immensely complicated structure of the various types of protein (a protein consists of over twenty different amino acids - these in turn are complex compounds of carbon chain or ring which contain nitrogen in the form of the NH2-group). 

Finally, the mechanistic science ideal demanded the denial that the modal aspect of life [Biotic law-sphere] cannot be reduced to another aspect [ie to the Physical-Energy (“mineral”) Law-sphere - see chart above]. The functions of life were nothing but a complicated modality of the physico-chemical characteristics of protein matter. And this protein in turn was supposed to have been formed in the same mechanistic manner from existing inorganic compounds in the "proto-sea" of earlier geological periods.

And so one witnessed the revival - under the banner of the modern mechanistic science ideal of an ancient mythology, already known in Greek natural philosophy - of a spontaneous production of living matter from dead material: the "generatio aequivoca." The leap from dead to living protein posed no problem for this mechanistic way of thinking.

In reality, however, the problem of the structure of individuality returned even beyond the boundaries of the life-aspect [Biotic law-sphere] in inorganic chemical compounds [Physical/ Energy (“mineral”) law-sphere].

Extracts from Herman Dooyeweerd’s ‘Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy’ Vol II, Paideia Press 2013) 

[NB Confusing cover says: "SERIES A -VOLUME SIX". This is in fact the central volume of a trilogy called: "Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy". See info on Amazon's rear cover image.]

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Hi Alan,

Everything within Time functions holistically within ALL law-spheres/ aspects. ALWAYS. Without exception. The law-spheres, after all, are aspects of TIME. 

There are different creaturely "templates” ("individuality structures") at work: rock, rose, horse, human etc. Also fried eggs, paper, paint, birds nests, bridges, TVs, football clubs, families, governments, churches, businesses, schools etc etc. These all prioritise (are "qualified" by) different aspects, but they ALWAYS function, one way or another (as "subject" or as "object") in ALL aspects/ law-spheres.

The human does too, but as image of God the human alone also TRANSCENDS Time in his/her deepest selfhood/ heart (“God has put eternity in the heart” Ecclesiastes). Our loyalty and focus and worship are therefore directed above time (above and beyond the temporal law-spheres) to the Living God Who created and sustains and gives meaning to all creaturely reality within Time. Or our focus is directed towards an ersatz alternative.

The pagan or humanist in his/ her apostasy seeks, Dooyeweerd argues, to replace the Living Eternal God with something within Time. In effect, this idolatry invariably takes the form of an absolutisation of a law-sphere. The attempt is made to elevate that which is only relative to the role of ultimate integration-point and origin of all meaning of reality, including of one's personal selfhood.

By deifying one law-sphere (or occasionally an attempted synthesis of more than one) every other law-sphere is automatically interpreted as a mere by-product or court-retainer of that particular absolutised aspect. 

In Dooyeweerd's analysis, reflecting societal, historical, aesthetic, juridical etc law-spheres, a redressing dynamic will eventually engender a counter-balancing retribution. The disharmony will awaken the opposing polarity. Hence the arising of historical "ground-motive" dualisms: Hellenistic Form-Matter, Thomistic Nature-Grace, Humanistic Nature-Freedom.

Theoretical reductionism of reality to one law-sphere involves a flagrant disregard of the internal sphere-sovereignty and mutual irreducibility of all law-spheres. Everything has a Logical Aspect but cannot be exhausted by the Logical. Just as everything has Aesthetic and Economic Aspects but cannot be exhausted by the Aesthetic or Economic. 

Let us emphasise again that even the Logical/ Analytical law-sphere cannot be made the source of all other aspects. Some Christians might usefully ponder that. And philosophical Rationalists might benefit from greater awareness of the concrete selfhood behind the buzz-saw of Logic (to borrow a Van Til image). 

The concrete selfhood which, immersed in temporal reality, ALWAYS functions (always acts) in ALL aspects simultaneously. 

The concrete selfhood which necessarily transcends at its deepest human core Time itself. Harbouring (usually unawares or unacknowledged) a pre-committed ultimate ("religious", to use Dooyeweerd's term) anchorage deeper than thought itself. Deeper than Logic itself. For Logic, let us remember, is theoretical. The thinker is not. 

Picasso was once asked if, when eating a tomato, he envisaged it in cubist terms or whatever. "No", he reportedly replied. "I just eat the tomato." Ultimately we all just eat the time-immersed tomato.

Remember Dooyeweerd’s analogy of the fullness of truth like clear light refracting through the prism of Time. Thus, since all temporal reality always functions in all law-spheres, reality cannot be reduced to one "colour", eg to the Logical law-sphere. In fact, apart from the sustaining power of God over His creational laws, human theoretic reductionism (if actually realised) would pop reality like a soap bubble.  

So what of Classical Darwinism? Dooyeweerd points out here that it's explanation is incoherent on various levels. In the first instance it absolutises the Biotic law-sphere. This reductionist "biologism" is a kind of metaphysics, in that it attempts to reify (assert as actual substance “out there” ) that which is merely an idea in the head. 

In Dooyeweerd's view the law-spheres succeeding the Biotic (see chart above) cannot be derived from the Biotic. The law-spheres are "ontologically prior" to that which functions within them (eg living entities).

This error is then compounded by trying to derive “Life” from non-living matter. This shifts the absolutisation/ reductionism down from the Biotic law-sphere to the Physical-Energy (mineral) law-sphere. 

“A theoretic magic trick”, Dooyeweerd quips.

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Dooyeweerd: Consequences of Scholastic absolutizing of “moral law”

Dooyeweerd: Consequences of Scholastic absolutizing of “moral law”(Extracts from Herman Dooyeweerd’s ‘Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy’ Vol II)

[pp 218-219] We then arrive again at the real Scriptural view that all temporal aspects of the divine law find their deeper unity in a common root: the central religious commandment: to serve and love God with our whole heart and all our strength; and our neighbour as ourselves, as a fellow member of the religious community of mankind - with its common root (origin). 

This is the fullness and absolute unity of divine law, as Christ Jesus taught us. Only in this religious sense is the law of God supra-temporal, does it transcend the temporal cosmos, does it have meaning for eternity.

One can easily fail to grasp the full religious meaning of this command if one applies it only to human existence as perceived according to the Greek doctrine of substance, whereby the other temporal creatures such as inorganic things, plants and animals, are left out. Such a view certainly fails to do justice to the deeper sense of the Christian law-idea. It fails to appreciate that the entire temporal cosmos is religiously rooted in the human race, which is why the radical fall into sin has dragged this whole temporal cosmos with it.

No, the full meaning of the central religious command was already given in the order of creation itself. This command includes nothing less than the divine demand of centering the entire temporal cosmos, with all the forces and potentialities placed in it, upon the religious service in love of God and neighbor. For God created the human being as the lord of the entire temporal creation. The entire meaning of the temporal cosmos is included in the heart of his existence.

Only for that reason does this central command indeed include the deepest religious unity of all divine ordinances for temporal reality, without exception. This implicitly condemns the view that it would only contain the religious meaning of the “moral law,” which itself merely governs a temporal aspect of our existence - that of morality. [NB "Moral" = "Ethical" law-sphere. See pale blue band near top of yellow list on chart above]. 

The concept of the “moral law” as the unity of norm for human action is derived from Greek, and especially Aristotelian and Stoic philosophy, but is utterly foreign to Scripture. It was originally inspired by the rational form principle in the religious ground-motive of form and matter. According to Thomas [Aquinas] the moral law as the norm for our actions is founded upon the rational form of “human nature”. 
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[pp 220-221] This view of the moral law left no room for an investigation into the various modal normative aspects for human action.

Aristotelian-Thomist “natural ethics” developed a “doctrine of virtues” that was not at all based on the nuclear moment of the moral aspect, the temporal relationship of love in its normative sense. [...] The modal nucleus of meaning of what is moral [ethical] was never made into an issue here.

The theology of the Reformation accommodated this Greek concept of the moral law to Scripture by identifying the moral law with the Decalogue, which in turn was concentrically compressed into the central religious command. Thus one could reject autonomous “natural ethics” and declare only a ”theological” moral law valid, while still taking one’s philosophic orientation from the Greek view of the moral law as the unity of norm. 

However, the great cultural mandate, given to humankind at creation, could not possibly be squeezed into the framework of “moral law”. The result was that the view of the moral law as the absolute and only norm for our actions simply could not be squared with Scripture.

Again, this whole concept of the norm was the fruit of the scholastic urge to accomodate. But it left science completely in the dark when it saw itself confronted with the task to investigate the normative aspects of reality in their specific law-spheres (and those are all the aspects that come after the psychic-sensory aspect in the cosmic order of time) [Note "Sensory/ Psychic (feeling)" law-sphere on yellow panel list above].

The prejudice that the unity of norm for human action would be given in the “moral law” led to the following situation. It became impossible to accept norms for historical culture, for social interaction, for economics and justice in the irreducible character for each of them, and the danger of identifying the norms for faith with the moral law was ignored altogether. 

But absolutizing the moral [ethical] aspect of reality at the same time led to an intrinsic disturbance of insight into the modal structure of this moral law-sphere itself, which is inseparably interwoven with all other law-spheres in time in its analogies [retrocipations and anticipations].

As a result, basic problems such as the relation of morals and history, of justice and history, of economics and history, etc., were addressed in a fundamentally erroneous manner -- if they were addressed at all.
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[pp 223-224] As long as Christian thinkers refuse to be led by a truly Scripturally-directed idea of the law, they cannot gain insight into the proper relation between faith and the laws of nature. As long as the entire view of the law is not transformed, miracles have to remain in conflict with the concept of natural law for the scientist.

But humankind held onto a theoretical view of reality, determined by the dialectic, unscriptural ground-motives. And so, from the standpoint of accommodation, the same irreconcilable dualism retained the upper hand in the understanding of the law. It prevented scholastic anthropology from penetrating to the root and deeper unity in human nature. It created the same theoretic dichotomy between the “moral law” and the “natural laws” - discovered by modern science - as between “material body” and “rational soul”. 

From this starting point one cannot possibly penetrate to the radical unity of all the aspects of the law. Indeed, the dualistic starting point of one’s theory made the entire insight into the various modal structures of the law-spheres impossible.

The wealth of modal structures was lost due to a theoretic dichotomy in the temporal order which the divine law-order displays in time.
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[p 224] As soon as theoretic thinking was again concentrated upon the radical all-encompassing meaning of divine law, the levelling dichotomy in the theoretical law-concept also had to be broken.

When we direct our theoretical glance in time from a Scriptural starting point, the religious unity and meaning-fullness of God’s law breaks up into a multicoloured wealth of law-spheres, which are merely the modal aspects it displays in time. 

Just as sunlight is refracted by a prism into the color spectrum of the rainbow, time functions like a prism that breaks up the meaning of the religious fullness of the divine law.

The temporal aspects of this law possess sphere-sovereignty and sphere-universality. In their modal structures they are inseparably interwoven, so that not one of them can be lifted out of this coherence and made into absolute law.

Extracts from Herman Dooyeweerd’s ‘Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy’ Vol II, Paideia Press 2013) 

[NB Confusing cover says: "SERIES A -VOLUME SIX". This is in fact the central volume of a trilogy called: "Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy". See info on Amazon's rear cover image.]

See also:

The scholastic distinction between moral theology and natural ethics

Dooyeweerd: ETHICS: Aalders, Brunner, Luther

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Dooyeweerd: Scripture, Philosophy, Scientific Dogmatism

Scripture, Philosophy, 

Scientific Dogmatism 

by Herman Dooyeweerd 

(Some quotes from pages 5 to 50 of Herman Dooyeweerd's 

'Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy' Vol 2, 

Paideia Press 2013, paperback £9.00) 

[pp 3-4] The Scriptural ground-motive tolerates no compromise with a religious [ie “ultimate”] ground-motive that is unscriptural. It is integral, and it demands the whole person in body and soul. It lays claim to all of life. In mankind and its religious [“ultimate”] root, the biblical ground-motive directs, in concentric fashion, the entire cosmos with all its forces and potencies toward the service of God, who has revealed Himself in His Word.
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[p 4] What area of our temporal existence could withdraw from such spiritual workings? The Apostle Paul, by faith, dared to involve even the most "trivial" things of life, such as eating and drinking, in the glorification of God. How then could such an important area as the domain of science shut its doors to the spiritual force of this ground-motive?
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[pp 5-6] The demand for a fundamental reformation of all of life, scientific activity included, is contained in the central commandment of love. Christ Himself understood this central commandment as the basic unity of all the laws that God gave His creatures: to serve God in love with all our heart and powers. Among the latter, the mind is mentioned with special emphasis. It is impossible to accept this central commandment in its radical and integral meaning and at the same time to reject the demand for a reformation of our attitude to life and thought.

But Scripture, as norm of faith, is not just a system of religious truths, accessible to all, from which science could deduce its ultimate foundations along logical lines. If that were the case, even the devil, in the guise of an orthodox scholar, could carry on Christian science. Scripture is only accessible through the operation of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God is spirit and power unto life or unto death. That is the antithesis it poses. This antithesis is not theoretical in nature; it does not oppose one theoretical system to another. Rather, it reaches to the religious [“ultimate”] root of human existence.
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[pp 6-7] The reformational Scriptural principle poses a task of ongoing reformation, also for science, a never-ending task while the present dispensation lasts. It means that we can never rest from ridding our science of concepts which have their source, not in the ground-motives of the Divine Word-revelation, but in idolatrous motives. It guards against the canonization of all human ideas or pronouncements and always submits these to the crucial test -- the radical critique of the Word of God. This is the anti-scholastic principle in the spirit of the reformation.
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[pp 7-8] Scripture is a coherent and unified whole. It cannot be approached from a temporal historical or moral perspective, but only from its own religious ground-motive. In this ground-motive it manifests itself to the human heart as the truly divine revelation through the Holy Spirit; and it places itself in radical opposition to all religious conceptions that originate in the apostate heart of humankind.

What happens when we try to approach the basic theme of creation, fall into sin, and redemption through Christ Jesus from the apostate human point of view? In revolutionary fashion, the basic religious relation between God and the human person is immediately turned upside down. Whereas "God created man in His own image," apostate humankind creates its God after its own image. In Adam man fell away from God and thus came under God's judgement. The apostate human heart, however, summons his God before the bar of human reason. There it seeks for a theodicy, a justification of the divine order that would cancel the consequences of the Fall in temporal life by means of the "harmony of a rational system."

The great trial between God and apostate humanity, however, is not conducted before the tribunal of human reason. It takes place before the judgement seat of God. God has revealed His love and justice in their divine original unity in Christ Jesus, the Word incarnate. This Word has earned for us radical salvation from sin through His cross and restored true fellowship between God and mankind.
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[p 8] This ground-motive is the heart of Scripture. Primarily it is not a theoretical, theological doctrine, but a divine dunamis that transforms all theory at its root. And this dunamis [“power”] operates in this manner only in palingenesis, in the rebirth of the heart.

If anyone approaches Scripture from another religious [“ultimate”] ground-motive, not even the most extensive theological knowledge of Scripture will protect him 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.
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[p 13] The reformation of scientific thought that Calvin and Luther began in the field of theology did not begin to spread through science as a whole until the Calvinist revival led by Kuyper toward the end of the nineteenth century. What was the reason for this delay? From the very start, Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) had guided the reformational movement in science down the scholastic path of synthesis with the spirit of antiquity and Humanism.
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[p 15] The golden opportunity to develop a Christian philosophy animated by the spirit of the Reformation was thereby suppressed for centuries. Melanchthon's enormous influence continued to dominate philosophical instruction and research at Protestant universities. Soon it allied itself there with the restoration of Aristotelian scholasticism, until finally the humanistic Enlightenment appeared on the scene and Protestant theology itself fell victim to synthesis.
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[p 15] Humanism, on the other hand, posited the dogma of the autonomy of science as a theoretical axiom. The logic of this dogma demanded that every attempt to arrive at an inner reformation of scientific thought be nipped in the bud by simply banishing it from scientific discussion.
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[p 21] Dynamics, movement is everything today. Misconstruing the ground-motive of Greek thought, some people think that the pronouncement of the Greek thinker Heraclitus, “all is in flux, nothing abides”, can be used once again to describe the current spiritual-intellectual situation. Humanism thus has fallen into decline precisely in its dogmatic attitude.
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[pp 21-22] Like a tidal wave, historicism, pragmatism, vitalism and existentialism have inundated the riverbed of modern philosophical thought. They are all characterized by an irrationalistic, anti-systematic spirit that regards every “system” as suspect from the start.

To ground philosophic thought in an eternal truth, whether this be the divine Word-revelation or a realm of rational ideas or values, has become unzeitgemäß, out of step with the times, in the full sense of the word.
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[p 26] The Philosophy of the Law-Idea has broken radically with traditional notions of a “Christian Philosophy”. Its demand for a reformation of philosophical thought entails the precise opposite of scholastic attempts at accommodation. Although it is rooted in the Scriptural starting point of the Calvinist reformation, it does not try to base itself on scientific-theological dogmatics. While openly confessing that it is bound to the ground-motive of the divine Word-revelation, it simultaneously wages a relentless battle against every form of philosophical dogmatism that puts all its confidence in philosophical thought and pretends that its religious presuppositions are theoretical axioms.
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[pp 26-27] By virtue of its reformational ground-motive it has begun in its philosophical system a principled battle against the scholastic tradition, even where this comes to expression in Reformed thought. Nevertheless, it recognizes the scientific value of classic scholasticism, found in its often profound philosophical insights. In the same manner it also wishes to do full justice to ancient Greek and modern humanistic philosophy. It steadfastly opposes, however, every attempt at synthesis between the Christian ground-motive and the ground-motives of unscriptural philosophy.
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[pp 44-46] On the other hand, humanists have no right to deny the scientific character of dogmatic reformational theology on the ground that its practitioners, by faith, are materially bound to Scripture as the positive, creaturely form of the divine Word-revelation. They assume that a truly scientific study of Scripture is only possible if it is regarded as a purely historical and literary document.

Such a view of the matter is intrinsically unscientific, however; for one of the primary requirements for scientific insight is recognition of the peculiar nature of one's field of inquiry. Scripture, in its creaturely temporal form, only allows itself to be approached as divine Word-revelation, regardless of the aspect from which one considers it scientifically. As such, it demands faith in its divine Origin. Anyone who attempts to approach Scripture on the basis of humanistic faith in the autonomy of human reason fundamentally distorts its nature and therefore can never gain access to it by means of science.

Scripture is God’s Word-revelation in the creaturely form of written documents. These have been composed by human authors who, while inspired by the Holy Spirit, still completely retained their individual human character, their style of writing, and their cultural development. It would not be a revelation of God if it did not enter into this human, creaturely form, but instead remained pure and at rest in the perfect being of God.

This creaturely form of Scripture, however, also necessarily exposes it to misunderstanding and rejection on the part of apostate humanity. Just as, in its incarnation in Christ Jesus, the divine Word became a sign that had to be spoken against (Luke 2:34 ['Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against']), so from the start, when it entered the creaturely realm of humankind, the divine Word-revelation was subjected to the gainsaying of human hubris. This hubris becomes manifest both in the deification of the human form of Scriptural revelation and in the humanization of its divine character.

Scripture does not reveal its divine character through a miraculous sign from heaven, visible or audible to everyone. Indeed, even such a sign would be spoken against. Only God's Spirit can reveal God to us in His Word, and not through visible signs, but through its silent work of regeneration in the human heart. Human hubris wants no true communion with God. That is why it rejects His Word. This human hubris must first be broken, and the human heart must first be made receptive, if the Word of God is to make its home there. Only then, moreover, is the soil prepared for scientific inquiry that bases itself on God's Word and is transformed by that Word at its root. But in every dimension of this inquiry, the Word of God demands that its ground-motive be accepted completely.

It is a universally valid scientific requirement that one must always be prepared to abandon one's theoretical views, however dearly one holds them, if closer examination reveals that they find no support in one's field of study or are even contradicted by fundamental states of affairs that obtain there. Scientific dogmatism is always unscientific. This is equally true even for systematic theology, to the extent that it holds fast to the scholastic philosophical tradition. Theology openly displays such an unscientific dogmatism when it tries to find support for unscriptural philosophical concepts [such as “substance,” 'human nature," "rational soul," "immortal soul," etc (p29)] in the terminology of certain foreign confessional documents such as the Westminster Confession or the Second Helvetic Confession. In this case the threat to the purity of the Reformed confession comes from theology, not from the direction of a philosophy [eg The Philosophy of the Law-Idea] that wishes to take the ground-motive of Scripture seriously, even in the domain of science, by undertaking an inner reformation of philosophic thought.

On the other hand, scholars of humanistic persuasion must never think that the scientific requirement mentioned above ever could entail an abandoning of faith in the absolute Truth of the divine Word-revelation. For this faith is a necessary presupposition of Christian scholarship as such; and in the scientific examination of Scripture it is demanded by the nature of what is investigated.

The guidance of Christian faith provides the most eminent guarantee of the scientific character of scientific inquiry, provided one always remembers that divine revelation and church confession are not themselves scientific in nature, but have to be interpreted in accordance with their own character. When Christian faith does not guide science, then, because of the lack of science's self-sufficient structure, another faith will take over; and by the standard of God's Word such a faith must be labeled as "unbelief," which in this context means a false faith. The control of such a false faith becomes evident when scientific authority is ascribed to religious [“ultimate”] presuppositions, an act that is tantamount to a fundamental violation of the sphere-sovereignty of science.

Why have systematic theologians offered so many misconceptions regarding the idea of a Christian philosophy? In the final analysis, these can all be traced back to their lack of insight into the internal point of contact between philosophy and the Christian religion.

Theologians failed to understand that the religious [“ultimate”] ground-motive, in which philosophical thought is rooted, controls one's entire philosophic view of the intrinsic structure of temporal reality. Instead, they started by accepting philosophical conceptions of reality rooted in unscriptural, dualistic ground-motives; and they then sought, in a merely external theological fashion to accommodate these conceptions to Christian doctrine. They therefore also did not see that the Scriptural ground-motive of the Christian religion has a central significance for the internal progress of philosophical inquiry, since it overturns the whole unscriptural view of the structure of temporal reality at its very root. They did not look for inner reformation, but only for external accommodation; and in so doing they never found the way to a genuinely Christian philosophy.

[p 47] Philosophy will not allow itself to be degraded to the role of a handmaiden of theological science. [...] As soon as one considers the unique character of philosophy, this must immediately become clear.

[p 48] It is only philosophy, moreover, that can give us theoretical insight into the typical structures of individual totalities such as things, concrete events, the temporal form of human existence, and the forms of society. All these, too, lie beyond the scope of the special sciences, and as typical total structures of reality they overarch, on principle, all the aspects of reality. Philosophy can only offer this insight, however, on the basis of a person's integral experience of reality, not on the basis of an a priori metaphysics.

[pp 48, 49] In the light of all this, how could it be possible to adapt to Christian doctrine a philosophic conception of reality that is entirely controlled by the dualistic form-matter motive (for example, the conception of reality offered in Aristotle's Metaphysics, or the philosophical epistemology developed in his Logic)? Such an attempt at accommodation will in reality have consequences that are utterly different from those intended. Although the philosophical conceptions mentioned above may purportedly be incorporated into theology for merely "formal use", they will inevitably have a material influence on the theological understanding of Christian doctrine. Indeed, they will even end up playing a dangerous role in the theological exegesis of Scripture. I will present various examples of this in my critical examination of the scholastic concept of substance.

The road of accommodation thus leads to a dead end. The concern of truly Christian philosophy is not to accommodate "philosophy" to Christian doctrine, which in actual practice rather proves to be an accommodation of Scripture to unscriptural philosophy. On the contrary, its concern is the inner reformation of philosophic thought while preserving its unique, intrinsic nature.

[p 49] Philosophy has a different task, a field of inquiry that differs from that of systematic theology. The Christian religion guarantees that we have an integral point of contact with philosophy, for it reaches to the religious ["ultimate"] root of the whole of temporal reality. Philosophy investigates this structure of reality.

[pp 49-50] One necessary implication of the foregoing is that Biblical texts can no longer be appealed to in intrinsically philosophic inquiry in order to sanction particular scientific views. On the other hand, however, in laying the Christian foundations of philosophy the Scriptures, and subordinated to it the confessions, will now indeed become the only sources. All philosophical problems must be probed down to their religious root, and at that point only the divine Word-revelation can shed light, a light which illumines the whole philosophic view of the structure of reality but which, in the nature of the case, can never itself provide the solution to an intrinsically scientific problem.

This is, therefore, indeed a radical reversal of the standpoint of accommodation taken by Augustinian and Protestant scholasticism. There, after all, the use of Scripture to address intrinsically philosophical questions was an indispensable requirement for the "Christianization" of philosophy. This was necessary because, in adopting Greek or scholastic philosophy, the Augustinians and Protestants also implicitly adopted the religious ground-motives on which they were based. And the more alien the foundations of their philosophy were to the Christian religion, the more copious, on this standpoint of accommodation, became their appeals to Bible texts in order to sanction their philosophic views and concepts. "Profane wisdom", after all, had to be brought into agreement with Scripture; it had to be adapted for "theological use". 

If the divine Word-revelation really is used to "solve" scientific problems, however, then it cannot be the foundation of science. The foundation must lie at a lower level than the building that will rest on it, and it must be of a different nature. [...] Philosophy must either be Scriptural in its foundation - or it will not even exist for the Christian!

(from Herman Dooyeweerd,'Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy' Vol 2, Paideia Press 2013, paperback £9.00)

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Dooyeweerd: Points of Departure: The Biblical ground-motive as sole guarantor of the Western and Global intellectual community

Photo: Copyright F. MacFhionnlaigh

Points of Departure: 

The Biblical ground-motive as sole guarantor of the Western and Global intellectual community.

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'The religious ground-motives in the development of Western civilization are basically the following:

1. The "form-matter" ground-motive of Greek antiquity in alliance with the Roman power motive (imperium).

2. The Scriptural ground-motive of the Christian religion: creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus Christ in communion with the Holy Spirit.

3. The Roman Catholic [Thomistic] ground-motive of "nature-grace", which seeks to combine the two mentioned above.

4. The modern humanistic ground motive of "nature-freedom", in which an attempt is made to bring the three previous motives to a religious synthesis concentrated upon the value of human personality.' 

(Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, Paideia Press, 2012, p15) 

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Extract from Herman Dooyeweerd, 'Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy', Paideia Press 2012, Vol 1 pp 28-31):

It must be established from the outset that the Christian and the non-Christian starting points do not at all stand in the same position with respect to understanding each other religiously. Certainly from the perspective of the Christian starting point, based on the Scriptures, it is entirely possible to penetrate to the religious [ie ultimate] meaning of the starting points and ground-motives that stand in opposition to it. For it is only in the light of the Christian starting point that the latter can be revealed in their most profound meaning. The Christian shares, furthermore, in the solidarity of the human race in its fall into sin. Thus the ground-motives in question cannot be alien to him in a religious [ie ultimate] sense.

It is in the light of the ground-motive of the divine Word-revelation that the true position of the non-Christian ground-motives is established. They are unequivocally a result of the fall. In the redemption accomplished by Christ Jesus the fallen world has been reconciled, not in a speculative and dialectical fashion, but in reality. This means that the non-Christian ground-motives are not dialectically mediated in the ground-motive of Scripture. On the contrary, the divine Word-revelation exposes them as fundamentally false and annihilates them as religious [ie ultimate] starting points, even as it illumines by the light of the divine truth whatever relative moments of truth they may contain. Of themselves the non-Christian ground-motives have nothing to offer the Christian ground-motive by way of complementation. They have no inherent, positive truthfulness to set over against it. The Christian ground-motive, moreover, may not be conceived of as the higher synthesis of all the non-Christian ones; for a synthesis is unable to stand in absolute antithesis to the mutually antithetical elements which it itself has brought to a higher unity.

In its continuing operation, however, the ground-motive of the Christian religion is the only one in a position to guarantee the integrity of the historically determined philosophical community of thought in the West. That is the case, because as a point of departure for philosophy it bars the way to any scientific exclusivism, in which any particular line of thought would seek to elevate its own point of departure, making it the criterion for what does and what does not qualify as science.

If the Christian ground-motive truly has an effect on philosophic thought, it of necessity leads the latter to a radical, transcendental critique, which elucidates the fundamental difference between scientific judgements proper and the supra-scientific pre-judgments which lie at the foundation of their possibility. For this reason the Christian ground-motive refuses to allow any particular philosophical movement to be excluded from the philosophical community because of its point of departure. It relentlessly exposes every philosophical dogmatism, which exalts its own religious [ie ultimate] point of departure to be the criterion for what may qualify as science, and which passes off the so-called autonomy of science as a scientific axiom even though a truly critical inquiry into the structure of scientific thought has never been undertaken. The Christian ground-motive also cuts off at the roots the hubris of schools of thought which entertain the illusion that they themselves have a monopoly on science and which therefore never engage in truly scientific discussion with those who occupy other standpoints. And, finally, it is in possession of the only real key to understanding those religious [ie ultimate] ground-motives over against which it has set itself in radical religious [ie ultimate] antithesis. Therefore, it will allow these [non-Christian] ground-motives to receive their full due in respect of their significance for the internal philosophical stance of the trend of thought controlled by them.

At the same time, however, the Christian ground-motive, with its resources for understanding, reaches out beyond the boundaries of the West and lays the only possible foundation for a genuine intellectual community of mankind, because it penetrates beyond all of the temporal distinctions of race and historical culture to the foundational religious [ie ultimate] community of the human race. It is this basic community, lying at the religious [ie ultimate] centre of human existence, that establishes the possibility of the community of philosophical thought. And since the radical antithesis, resulting from the fall and the redemption in Christ Jesus, was made manifest within this basic community itself as it came into existence through God's creation, the influence of this antithesis must also be felt in the temporal community of thought as soon as the Christian ground-motive comes into play within it as a spiritual dunamis. 

Nevertheless, just as this absolute antithesis at the spiritual root of humanity does not result in the destruction but rather in the radical preservation of community, it can never lead to the disintegration and dissolution of the historically conditioned philosophic community of thought, as long as the religious dynamic of the Christian ground-motive continues to make itself felt within it. For the Christian religion [ie the ultimate Biblical ground-motive thereof] does not release its grip on fallen man, nor does it leave him out of account; it continually goes in pursuit of him. The radical antithesis it poses is the absolute condition for the preservation of the philosophic community of thought within our sinful society.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, I presented an argument for all of these points in my essay "The Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought: A Contribution toward the Elimination of Exclusivism in Science" ("De transcendentale critiek van het wijsgerig denken: Een bijdrage tot overwinning van het wetenschappelijk exclusivisme der richtingen". Synthese, IV, July 1939, pp 314-39.)

From a non-Christian standpoint there exists no true, ie, religious or spiritual, possibility of understanding with respect to the Christian ground-motive. This possibility cannot exist apart from the life-giving Spirit, who enlightens the spiritual eye and focuses it upon the true centre of life, Jesus Christ. 

Just for this reason the idolatrous ground-motives will continually seek to ban the dunamis of the Scriptural ground-motive from the intellectual community of the West. They constitute, therefore, a constant threat to it in its integral character. They are continually impelled to restrict the intellectual community to the circle of their own actual or presumed adherents. Accordingly, they must present those who engage in philosophy from a Christian standpoint with the choice of either accommodating their philosophic thought to the apostate ground-motive which is temporarily dominant in Western culture, or of seeing themselves excluded from the circle of those who have intellectual standing. 

Since they never arrive at a veritable transcendental critique of theoretical thought, the adherents of these ground-motives are constantly guilty of dogmatically identifying their own supra-theoretical pre-judgments with scientific axioms. As a consequence, misled by the dogma of the autonomy of science, they constantly run the danger of interpreting Western philosophy from its beginnings within the framework of their own modern ground-motives.

In all of these tendencies, they will invariably come to stand in radical antithesis to philosophic thought which is impelled and directed by the Christian ground-motive. For this reason, it has only the appearance of paradox when I assert that the radical antithesis which is posed by the Christian religion is the sole guarantor of the integrity of the intellectual community of the West.

(Extract from Herman Dooyeweerd, 'Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy', Paideia Press, 2012, Vol 1, pp 28-31)

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