Understanding Dooyeweerd Better Than He Understood Himself

Theodore Plantinga (1947-2008)

UNDERSTANDING DOOYEWEERD BETTER THAN HE  UNDERSTOOD HIMSELF 

by Theodore Plantinga

Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009) 105–114 

Ernst  Cassirer  (1946,  140)  once  observed:  “In  the  history  of  ideas  it  is  by  no means  unusual  that  a  thinker  develops  a  theory,  the  full  purport  and significance  of  which  is  still  hidden  to  himself.”  Cassirer  was  echoing  no  less  a personage  than  Kant  himself.  Kant  had  written  long  before:  “…  it  is  by  no means unusual, upon comparing the thoughts which an author has expressed in regard to his subject, whether in ordinary conversation or in writing, to find that we understand him better than he has understood himself. As he has not sufficiently determined his concept, he has sometimes spoken, or even thought, in  opposition  to  his  own  intention.”2  May  we  take  our  lead  from  Kant  here? May  we  understand  Dooyeweerd  better  than  he  understood  himself,  even  to the  point  of  attributing  to  him  a  view  or  views  that  would  appear  to  be  “in opposition to his own intention”? 

It may sound a little strange, but something of this sort seems to have been underway  among  Dooyeweerd  interpreters  for  quite  some  time.  Many  have started  from  the  assumption  that  Dooyeweerd  and  Vollenhoven  held  to essentially the same position. Now, since there were some widely acknowledged differences,  something  would  have  to  yield,  and  what  often  yielded  was Dooyeweerd.  It  was  thought  that  in  essence  Dooyeweerd  was  saying  what Vollenhoven  had  also  been  saying.  One  could  therefore  allow  for  an  error  in Dooyeweerd  here  or  there  —  perhaps  even  a  “contradiction”  —  while  con-tinuing to hold him in high esteem. 

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C.S. Lewis: creationist and anti-evolutionist

C.S. Lewis: 

creationist and anti-evolutionist

by Jerry Bergman

Oxford University professor C.S. Lewis was one of the most important Christian apologists of the last century. Toward the end of his career, he concluded that the modern theory of evolutionary naturalism is “pure hallucination”. Lewis detailed the reasons for this conclusion in several of his later writings.

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Clive Staples Lewis (29 Nov 1898 – 22 Nov 1963) was one of the most celebrated Christian apologists of the last century. Called “one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century”, Lewis was a professor of medieval and early modern English literature at Oxford University from 1925 until his death in 1963. He earned a triple first class degree in philosophy from Oxford and wrote about 50 books, mostly dealing with literary criticism and Christian apologetics. No narrow specialist, Lewis wrote on a remarkable variety and range of subjects. Although reared a nominal Christian, at age 15 he became an atheist, due in part to the arguments against design that he learned in college such as the claim that life was poorly designed—a view called dysteleology.

Lewis returned to Christianity at age 33 after much self soul-searching and intensive reading of works by scholars such as George MacDonald, who used stories to convey Christian apologetics just as Lewis would become famous for doing later. Lewis soon became the “leading popular Christian apologist of the twentieth century”. He is also the “most widely read religious spokesman of our time and yet his main occupation was scholarship and university teaching.”

[...] Lewis, in his essay titled “The Funeral of a Great Myth”, explained why he regarded evolution as “the great Myth of nineteenth and early twentieth century”, one that he wanted to bury. He even calls the evolutionary myth a tragedy. In 1951 Lewis wrote that evolution was “the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives” and modern civilization.

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G.A. Ponsonby: How The BBC Stole The Referendum (Chapter 2)

How The BBC Stole The Referendum

by G.A. Ponsonby

Chapter 2 - 

The Impossible Referendum and a Trumped Up Smear

[Click here to read Chapter 1]

The BBC's behaviour in the final two weeks of the referendum campaign was appalling, but it wasn't a shock to seasoned independence campaigners. The BBC had come in for considerable criticism throughout the referendum for what many insisted was a pro-Union bias. A steady pattern of promoting pro-Union claims and headlining anti-independence news stories had led to a complete breakdown of trust between the BBC and many Scottish voters. The final two weeks was merely a culmination of years of journalistic deterioration.

Read entire Chapter 2 here

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Bruce Munro: Star of Bethlehem Font - Salisbury Cathedral 2014

Abiogenesis: Cooking with Gas?

Abiogenesis: Cooking with Gas?

Fantastic claims highlight the scientific absurdity of this recycled philosophy of ‘spontaneous generation’

by Renton Maclachlan (20 Dec 2014)

Preamble: The New Zealand Geographic magazine, to which I have long subscribed, is a really excellent production technically. But not surprisingly for this type of magazine (much like the better-known National Geographic), they also publish articles that drop in the standard evolutionary lines.

Over the past 25 years they have graciously published occasional letters from me pointing out the lack of evidence for their evolutionary claims. In the past few years, the evolutionary storytelling has intensified. In the March/April 2014 edition they published an article by regular contributor and evolutionary fanatic Dave Hansford, entitled ‘Cooking with gas’, under a heading ‘LIFE: Abiogenesis’. This article, which featured prominently the 1953 Miller/Urey experiment, was particularly thin in content and substantiation, lacked any real critical thought, and made the outrageous claim, in both the text and highlighted in a ‘pullout quote’:

“Life is coming into Earth from space all the time. Immediately you walk outside the house,” study leader Dr Milton Wainwright told BBC Radio, “you’re going to be covered in microrganisms [sic] or biological entities coming from space. We believe they’ve been coming in since year dot.”

Read full article here

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Dooyeweerd: Human Heart ⼼ as Supratemporal Root 本 of Creation 宇宙

Dooyeweerd: Human Heart ⼼ 

as Supratemporal Root 本 

of Creation 宇宙

God created man in His image. In the heart of man, the religious root, the center of his 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 man’s 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 mankind fell, but also that entire temporal cosmos of which man 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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Adam Ramsay: Raising the Blue Labour saltire on a sinking ship

Raising the Blue Labour saltire 
on a sinking ship

ADAM RAMSAY 16 December 2014

Labour's crisis in Scotland requires more than a charismatic leader and some dusty ideas from north London.

There are, in fact, contexts in which Jim Murphy might have been exactly what Scottish Labour needed: a decade ago, back in the boom times, you can imagine him articulating a saltired Blairism from Bute House in a way Jack McConnell never quite could. But if the members of Scottish Labour believe that the laws of physics still bend to the rules of the Labour leadership ballot, they are sorely mistaken: Scotland isn't going back in time to 2004. When they needed someone not just to turn their ship around, but to completely re-build it, they have voted for a captain to rally the sailers and raise the flag as it sinks beneath the waves.

There are three problems with Jim Murphy. This first is that he is tied so inextricably to Labour's past decade. At a time when it's clear to everyone that Scottish Labour needs to dramatically break from Blairism, he is a well known supporter of the Iraq War, Trident and austerity. Whatever pretty words he uses to pitch himself to the left, he's got a voting record at Westminster going back 17 years showing otherwise. Labour's problem isn't so much that they say the wrong things, but that people have come to the conclusion that they don't really believe anything. It's not that they need better policies (though they do) it's that they have to actually believe in them.

Read full article here

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