J. Glenn Friesen: Neo-Calvinism and Christian Theosophy - Franz von Baader, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd

Neo-Calvinism 

and Christian Theosophy: 

Franz von Baader, Abraham Kuyper, 

Herman Dooyeweerd

by J. Glenn Friesen

Paperback £13.95 (Amazon UK)

"The key ideas of Abraham Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism do not come from Calvin or from Reformed sources. Their source is the Christian theosophy of Franz von Baader (1765-1841). Among the many ideas derived from Baader are the ideas of a Christian worldview, a Christian philosophy, the idea of sphere sovereignty, opposition to the autonomy of thought, a Free University, the importance of an embodied spirituality, and the idea of our supratemporal heart, the center of our existence. Seeing these ideas in their historical context of Christian theosophy will challenge many of the current assumptions of evangelicals and reformational philosophers who claim to base their worldview and philosophy on Kuyper’s ideas or on the development of these ideas in the Christian philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). 

Part 1 of this book traces the reception of Baader's ideas by Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye and J.H. Gunning Jr., who then introduced Baader’s Christian theosophy ideas to Dutch Reformed theology. Chantepie de la Saussaye and Gunning transmitted these ideas to Kuyper, who acknowledges their influence. Kuyper refers to Baader’s writings with approval, and incorporates many of his ideas. 

Part 2 is a history of the development of Dooyeweerd’s Christian philosophy, and of the very different philosophy of his brother-in-law Dirk Vollenhoven. Whereas Dooyeweerd chose to incorporate the ideas of Christian theosophy, Vollenhoven did not. They disagreed with respect to almost every idea in their philosophies. 

Part 3 is a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd’s Christian philosophy. Although Dooyeweerd was not at all forthcoming about his sources, it is clear that there is a deep historical connection of his philosophy to Baader’s Christian theosophy, as well as to other mystical and non-Reformed sources. This insight allows us to understand many previously obscure parts of his philosophy and to correct previous misinterpretations of his work. It also opens the way for ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue."

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Interview with Dr J. Glenn Friesen
(courtesy of Steve Bishop's "An Accidental Blog")
Part 1     Part 2
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Dr J. Glenn Friesen's
Dooyeweerd Site
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Herman Dooyeweerd: Human Heart as Supratemporal Root of Creation

Herman Dooyeweerd: 

Human Heart as Supratemporal 

Root of Creation

God created humanity in His image. In the human heart, the religious root, the center of our being, God concentrated all of creation toward His service; here He laid the supratemporal root of all temporal creatures. This human heart, from which according to Scripture come the wellsprings of life ["Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life." Prov 4:23 NSV], transcends all things temporal in the service of God. The whole religious sense (meaning) of God’s creation lies in our heart, our entire ego, our complete self. This heart, in which according to the Word eternity has been laid ["He has also set eternity in the human heart" Eccles 3:11 NIV], is the true supratemporal center of human existence, and at the same time it is the creaturely center of all of God’s creation. The apostasy of this heart, of this root of creation, necessarily swept with it all temporal creation. In Adam not only all humankind fell, but also that entire temporal cosmos of which the human was the crowned head. And in Christ, the Word become flesh, the second Covenant Head, God gave the new root of His redeemed creation, in Whom true humanity has been implanted through self-surrender, through surrender of the center of existence, the heart. (Herman Dooyeweerd: The Christian Idea of the State, Craig Press 1968, p5)

See also:

ABC Dooyeweerd 3: Inquietum
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Dooyeweerd: Humanity has an eternal destination

The Battle of Alexander at Issus by Albrecht Altdorfer (1480–1538)

Humanity has an eternal destination

by Herman Dooyeweerd

(New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 3, pp 783-784)

At least one central point of a truly Christian anthropology must be made perfectly clear. Humanity, as such, has no temporal qualifying function like temporal things and differentiated societal structures, but at the root of its existence it transcends all temporal structures. Therefore the search for a "substantial essential form" of human nature, in the sense of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical anthropology, is incompatible with what the Scriptures have revealed to us about created human nature.

In the radical community of the human race according to the divine order of creation, the human is not qualified as [ie not "framed" or "defined" as] a "rational-moral being", but only by the kingly position as personal religious creaturely centre of the whole earthly cosmos. In humanity the rational-moral functions also find their concentration and through humanity the entire temporal world is included both in apostasy and in salvation. All things, beings, and factual relations qualified by a temporal modal function are transitory, the temporal bonds of love included. But the human has an eternal destination, not as an abstract "rational soul" or spiritual "mind", but in the fulness of one's concrete, individual personality. This puts it beyond any doubt that the various conceptions of "body" and "soul", or of "body", "soul" and "spirit" devised from the immanence stand-point are in principle unserviceable in a Christian anthropology which starts from the radical basic motive of the Word-Revelation. The all-sided temporal existence of a human, i.e. one's "body", in the full Scriptural sense of the word, can only be understood from the supratemporal religious centre, i.e. the "soul", or the "heart", in its Scriptural meaning. Every conception of the so-called "immortal soul", whose supratemporal centre of being must be sought in rational-moral functions, remains rooted in the starting-point of immanence-philosophy [ie "time-enclosed" philosophy].

But all this merely relates to the only possible starting-point of a Christian anthropology. Anyone who imagines that from our standpoint human existence is no more than a complex of temporal functions centering in the "heart", has an all too simple and erroneous idea of what we understand by "anthropology". What has appeared in the course of our investigations in this third volume [of A New Critique of Theoretical Thought] is that in temporal human existence we can point to an extremely intricate system of enkaptic structural interlacements, and that these interlacements presuppose a comprehensive series of individuality structures, bound within an enkaptic structural whole. This insight implies new anthropological problems which cannot in any way be considered as solved. But they do not concern the central sphere of human existence, which transcends the temporal horizon. 

No existentialistic self-interpretation, no "act-psychology", no phenomenology or "metaphysics of the mind" can tell us what the human ego is, but — we repeat it — only the divine Word-Revelation in Christ Jesus. The question: "What is a human?" is unanswerable from the immanence-standpoint. But at the same time it is a problem which will again and again urge itself on apostate thought with relentless insistence, as a symptom of the internal unrest of an uprooted existence which no longer understands itself.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 3, pp 783-784)

Free download of this and other books by Herman Dooyeweerd 

HERE

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The Genius of Luther's and Calvin's Musical Reformation by Janet Danielson

THE GENIUS OF LUTHER’S AND CALVIN’S MUSICAL REFORMATION

by Janet Henshaw Danielson 

(The Regent World Dec 07, 2017)

Some myths just won’t die. Myths about music are particularly resistant to evidence or rational persuasion, perhaps because for many people the main feature of music is its style, and style is a matter of personal taste and cultural influence. Myths about the Reformation and music centre around themes of emancipation and development. [...] Little of this narrative stands up to scrutiny. [...] The dynamic new musical syntax forged by the Reformers laid the foundations for the great developments in European art music in subsequent centuries: opera, oratorio, sonata, symphony. 

READ FULL ARTICLE

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DOOYEWEERD: Form-Matter ground-motive | Superheroes and Zombies

HERMAN DOOYEWEERD:

Form-Matter Ground-motive:

Superheroes and Zombies 

Dooyeweerd’s analysis related to current movie culture.

The following consists of extracts from the book ‘In The Twilight of Western Thought’ by Herman Dooyeweerd, Paideia Press, 2012

HELLENISTIC FORM-MATTER GROUND-MOTIVE

The central motive of Greek philosophy, which we have designated as the form-matter motive in line with the Aristotelian terminology, originated from the meeting of the pre-Homeric religion of life and death, with the younger, cultural religion of the Olympian gods. The Aristotelian view of nature was no more independent of religious presuppositions than any other philosophical view. It was completely ruled by the dualistic religious basic motive of Greek thought, namely, that of form and matter [...] It originated from the meeting between two antagonistic Greek religions, namely, the older nature religion of life and death, and the younger cultural religion of the Olympian gods. Nietzsche and his friend Rhode were the first to discover the conflict between these religions in the Greek tragedies. Nietzsche spoke of the contest between the Dionysian and the Apollonian spirit in these tragedies. But in fact here was at issue a conflict in the religious basic motive of the whole Greek life and thought. (Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘In The Twilight of Western Thought’, Paideia Press, 2012, pp. 29).

MATTER MOTIVE -

ZOMBIES: the life of the one is the death of the other.

The pre-Olympian religion of life and death deified the ever-flowing stream of organic life which originates from mother earth and cannot be fixed or restricted by any corporeal form. In consequence, the deities of this religion are amorphous. It is from this formless stream of life that, in the order of time, the generations of beings separate themselves and appear in an individual bodily shape. This corporeal form can only be maintained at the cost of other living beings, so that the life of the one is the death of the other. So there is an injustice in any fixed form of life which for this reason must be repaid to the horrible fate of death, designated by the Greek terms anangke (ἀνάγκη, "inevitability, compulsion, necessity") and heimarmene (Εἱμαρμένη - "fate") tuche (τύχη - "luck", "fortuna"). This is the meaning of the mysterious words of the Ionian philosopher of nature, Anaximander: “The divine origin of all things is the apeiron (ἄπειρον, ie. that which lacks a restricting form). The things return to that from which they originate in conformity to the law of justice. For they pay to each other penalty and retribution for their injustice in the order of time.” 

Here the central motive of the archaic religion of life and death has found a clear expression in Anaximander’s philosophical view of physis (φύσις  - "nature"). It is the motive of the formless stream of life, ever-flowing throughout the process of becoming and passing away, and pertaining to all perishable things which are born in a corporeal form, and subjected to anangke. This is the original sense of the Greek matter-motive. It originated from a deification of the biotic aspect of our temporal horizon of experience and found its most spectacular expression in the cult of Dionysius, imported from Thrace.

FORM MOTIVE -

SUPERHEROES: deified cultural powers of American society.

The form-motive, on the other hand, was the central motive of the younger Olympian religion, the religion of form, measure and harmony. It was rooted in the deification of the cultural aspect of classical Greek society. This motive found its most profound expression in the cult of the Delphian god, Apollo, the legislator. The Olympian gods have left mother earth with its ever-flowing stream of organic life and its inescapable anangke. They have acquired the Olympus as their residence and have a personal and immortal form, imperceptible to the eye of sense, an ideal form of a perfect and splendid beauty, the genuine prototype of the Platonic idea as the imperishable metaphysical form of true being. But these immortal gods have no power over the anangke, the inexorable fate of death. Remember the utterance of Homer in his Odyssey: “The immortals too cannot help lamentable man when the cruel anangke strikes him down.” 

This is why the younger Olympian religion was only accepted as the public religion of the Greek polis (πόλις, the city-state). But in their private life the Greeks continued to hold to the old earthly gods of life and death. 

[...] The ancient Greeks, whose conception of human nature had such a predominant influence upon the traditional theological view of man, worshipped their Olympian gods who were merely deified cultural powers of Greek society. These gods were represented as invisible and immortal beings endowed with a splendid beauty and a supra-human power. But these splendid gods had no [ultimate?] power over the fate of death to which mortals are subjected. 

[...] The Olympian gods are personified cultural powers, the genuine prototype of the Platonic notion of the metaphysical eidos (είδος, or "idea").

(Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘In The Twilight of Western Thought’, Paideia Press, 2012, pp. 29, 111, 129).

Direct download of above BOOK (177 page PDF)

HOMEPAGE  for free downloads of Dooyeweerd books

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SEE ALSO:

DOOYEWEERD: The Four Formative Undercurrents of Western Thought: 1) The Greek ‘form-matter’ motive

DOOYEWEERD: The central and radical unity of our existence

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

DOOYEWEERD: Dialectical Theology - Barth & Brunner

FMF: Brief intro to Dooyeweerd: Aspects & Ground-motives
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J. Glenn Friesen: Enstasy: Center and Periphery (Heart and Cosmos)

Potter's Wheel, Das Ständebuch 1568 (Wiki Commons)

Enstasy: 

Center and Periphery 

(Heart and Cosmos)

An extract from the essay ‘Enstasy, Ecstasy and Religious Self-Reflection: A History of Dooyeweerd’s Ideas of Pre-theoretical Experience’ (125 page pdf)

by J Glenn Friesen

For Dooyeweerd, enstasis is the relation of our central heart to the peripheral cosmos, including our temporal body. We experience temporal reality as “our own.” The movement inwards of religious self-reflection is towards this center. It is only in that center that we have a view of totality (Friesen 2005a). We have seen how for Baader, true stasis is a relation to our true center. Baader also speaks of a view of totality from that center. And we have seen how Scheler, influenced by Baader, says that (in contrast to humans), temporal reality is ‘ecstatic’ because of its inability to report back to a center.

The distinction between our central supratemporal heart and its peripheral functions is emphasized by Dooyeweerd in the opening pages of his major work, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (1935).

Translation of excerpts of De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee 

(The Philosophy of the Law-Idea) 

(113 page pdf)

Study notes for De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee 

(The Philosophy of the Law-Idea) 

(62 page pdf) 

Dooyeweerd begins with a discussion of the importance of this central significance of the heart. Kant’s Copernican revolution was not central or radical (from ‘radix’), but only a revolution in the periphery, because rationality is only a peripheral function that finds its center in the heart. In contrast, a truly radical and revolutionary philosophy begins with the central supratemporal heart, which relativizes everything temporal, including our rationality. That is why Dooyeweerd can criticize the “autonomy of thought.” Thought is not autonomous, but is only one temporal function of our supratemporal center (WdW I, v-vii, poorly translated in New Critique I, v-vii; see Friesen 2011).

In one of his last lectures before his retirement, Dooyeweerd again emphasized the importance of the distinction between central and peripheral:

Center and Periphery: The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a Changing World (1964)

(70 page pdf)

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The above text is an extract (pp 66-67) from 

'Enstasy, Ecstasy and Religious Self-Reflection: 

A History of Dooyeweerd’s Ideas of Pre-theoretical Experience' 

by Dr J Glenn Friesen.

Download this entire article (PDF 125 pages) 

HERE

Visit J. Glenn Friesen’s Dooyeweerd Site 

HERE

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DOOYEWEERD: We have witnessed the unspeakably bloody and reactionary regime of nazism...

DOOYEWEERD: We have witnessed the unspeakably bloody and reactionary regime of nazism...

 Extract from: Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options’, Paideia Press, 2012, pp 52, 63, 74, 87)

‘We have witnessed the unspeakably bloody and reactionary regime of nazism, the degenerate spiritual offspring of modern historicism. Totalitarian “racial” [volkse] ideals, inspired by the myth of “blood and soil,” reverted western culture to the dark night of the pagan nature religions. Moreover, these totalitarian ideals were backed by the military power of a mighty modern state. […] Science and art, child rearing and education, industry and technology, labour organizations and philanthropy – all were made subservient. […] Following the example of the mathematical and natural sciences, earlier humanistic theory had always searched for the universally valid laws that control reality. It constructed an “eternal order of natural law” out of the “rational nature of humankind.” This order was totally independent of historical development, and was valid for every nation at all times and in all places. […] But as a result of the polarity of its religious [ie ultimate] ground-motive, humanism veered to the other extreme after the French Revolution. Rationalistic humanism (in its view of mathematics and modern natural science) turned into irrationalistic humanism, which rejected all universally valid laws and order. It elevated individual potential to the status of law. […] When the Historical School attempted to understand the entire culture, language, art, jurisprudence, and the economic and social orders in terms of the historical development of an individual national spirit, it elevated the national character to the status of the origin of all order. […] Historicism robs us of our belief in abiding standards […] If everything is in historical flux and if the stability of principles is a figment of the imagination, then why prefer an ideology of human rights to the ideals of a strong race and its bond to the German soil?’

 (Herman Dooyeweerd, ‘Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options’, Paideia Press, 2012, pp 52, 63, 74, 87)

Direct download of above BOOK (256 page PDF)

HOMEPAGE for free downloads of Dooyeweerd books

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SEE ALSO:

DOOYEWEERD: From Idealism to Historicism: Marxism as Messianic Faith

DOOYEWEERD: The Wielding of Power

More on Historicism

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