How
does our view of reality as God’s creation translate into reformational philosophy? We have seen that it requires us to recognise
the goodness and the richness of the world around us as well as human
responsibility within creation.
Philosophers like to use words in a precise way, so it would help to
have a word that we can use to refer to the whole of reality that will direct
our analysis according to the biblical principles outlined above. We could just use the word ‘creation’, but
that already carries lots of different meaning and would not help give the
direction needed. Instead, we want a
word that has, or can be given, a fairly precise meaning that brings out
something of philosophical significance from the belief that reality is indeed
God’s creation.
A
number of options can be suggested from the writing of different reformational
philosophers. We shall start with
Vollenhoven’s characterisation of reality as ‘subject’. He writes “That which
is created is completely dependent on the Creator, that is to say, wholly
subject to his sovereign law, Word revelation, and guidance”.
It
is not uncommon in modern philosophy to speak of ‘subject’ or of
‘subjectivity’. Descartes, the so-called
‘father of modern thought’, sought to overcome scepticism and provide a
foundation of certainty in science by starting from the thinking subject. Descartes took the Cogito (‘I think’) as the source or principle of its own activity
which can master the world which it confronts as its object. This ‘turn to subjectivity’ puts freedom and
rationality at the heart of our self-understanding and our view-point on the
‘external world’.
Vollenhoven’s
notion is quite different. As a
creature, a human being must acknowledge that she finds herself called to be
responsible. There is already God’s Word
that called us and the world into existence (Genesis 1), that gives us a task
(Gen 1:28 & 2:15), that invites us to live under God’s blessing,
represented in Genesis 2 by the tree of life, and that warns us against
choosing our own path, represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. As human beings we find that we
“stand in subjection” to God’s command.
God is King and we are ‘subjects’.
The
term subjectivity, in Vollenhoven, refers not just to us as human beings but to
the whole of creation as called forth by God’s word and as being sustained by
the same word. He takes this ‘being-subject’ of the cosmos as the point of
orientation for philosophy. Anthony Tol notes that "this ‘point of orientation’
characterises the being of created reality not as a theoretical-intellectual is, nor a practical-moral ought, but, in emphasising address and
response, a poetical-religious can"
By
the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
their
starry host by the breath of his mouth.
He
gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he
puts the deep into storehouses.
Let
all the earth fear the Lord;
let
all the people of the world revere him.
For
he spoke, and it came to be;
he
commanded, and it stood firm. (Psalm 33:6-9)
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