Further Reading

The sections 15-19 introduce the basic of the theory of the modal spheres. Dooyeweerd gives his fullest account of this theory in part I of the second volume of his New Critique (pp.3-426). Calvin Seerveld gives a helpful overview of Dooyeweerd’s modal theory in “Dooyeweerd’s legacy for aesthetics: Modal law theory” in The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd edited C.T. McIntire 1985 pp.41-79. Two other articles worth reading are D M F Strauss “The best known but least understood part of Dooyeweerd's philosophy” in Journal for Christian Scholarship 42 (2006): 61-80, and H G Geertsema “Analytical and Reformational Philosophy: Critical reflections regarding R. van Woudenberg’s meditation on ‘Aspects’ and ‘Functions’” Philosophia Reformata 69 (2004): 53-76. Most introductions to reformational philosophy will contain a section on the theory of the modal spheres, however for these sections I found Jonathan Chaplin’s discussion in Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian philosopher of state and civil society 2011, pp.55-61 particularly helpful. See also Hendrik Hart Understanding our World: An Integral Ontology (1984, University Press of America) chapter 4 particularly pp.190-198. For the historical  details concerning the development of the theory in Dooyeweerd see R.D. Henderson Illuminating Law: The construction of Herman Dooyeweerd’s philosophy 1918-1928 and Marcel E Verburg Herman Dooyeweerd: the life and work of a Christian philosopher, for Vollenhoven see John H. Kok “Social spheres and law spheres” in Philosophy as Responsibility edited by Ronald Kuipers, also Anthony Tol Philosophy in the making: D.H.Th. Vollenhoven and the emergence of reformed philosophy. Dirk Stafleu’s development of modal theory in terms of relation frames is explained in his The Open Future [http://www.mdstafleu.nl/427446844] as well as many other books and papers that can be found at www.mdstafleu.nl. §20 on time draws on Andre Troost (2012:123-125).

The discussion of sensory perception (§24) is largely based on Dooyeweerd’s analysis in NC II 370-374 and Encyclopedia of the Science of Law Vol. 1 185-195 (referred to in the text as ESL, I). Henk Geertsema gives a very helpful analysis of Dooyeweerd’s views in “Dooyeweerd on Knowledge and Truth” in Ways of Knowing Dordt Press, 2005 edited John H. Kok. The quote from J J Smart (§25) comes from his paper ‘Sensations and brain states’ Philosophical Review, vol.68 (Smart 1964). This explanation of the difference and connection between modal aspects and entities is based on Dooyeweerd ESL, I 204-206.

The definition of idionomy at the start of §26 is taken from Ouweneel 2014a 87.  The examples and claims of §27 concerning animals were based on Stafleu “Being human in the cosmos” Philosophia Reformata 56:2 (1991) pp.101-131. For the contrast between animals and humans use was also made of some examples of Antheunis Janse kindly supplied by Chris Gousmett. The discussion of encapsis in §28 draws heavily on Ouweneel 2014a 88-90.

Klapwijk’s example of a lie detector (§17) can be found in his Purpose in the living world? Creation and emergent evolution Cambridge, 2008 p. 126. This links with the later discussion in §30. A very important article for understanding a reformational approach to many of these issues is Henk Geertsema “Embodied Freedom” Koers Vol. 71, no.1 (2011): 33-58. Examples and quotes from Selim Berker “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37, no. 4 (2004): 293–329

The discussion of philosophical anthropology draws from a number of sources. The main ones being:

Dooyeweerd, Herman (1942) “De leer van de mensch in der Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee” translated as “The theory of Man: Thirty two propositions on anthropology”. Gerrit Glas (2010) “Christian Philosophical Anthropology” Philosophia Reformata 75:2, 141-189. Ouweneel, Willem J. (2014) “A Christian Anthropology” chapter 6 in Wisdom for Thinkers. Stafleu, Dirk (1991) “Being Human in the Cosmos” Philosophia Reformata 56:2 101-131. Strauss, D M F (2014) “Soul and Body: Transcending the dialectical intellectual legacy of the West with an integral biblical view?” In die Skriflig 48(1), Art. #1815. The example on the thyroid gland comes from Strauss with addition on hypothyroidism from David Hanson. The views expressed in §34 were considerably influenced by B J van der Walt’s At Home in God’s World Section C on “A multidimensional Christian view of being human” as well as Cornelis Vonk’s The Dead Know Nothing translated by Gerrit L Wassink (Alken Press, 1998). The quote from J.P Moreland & William Lane Craig can be found on page 288 of their Philosophical Foundation for a Christian Worldview (IVP, 2003). The reference to John Cooper is to his very valuable discussion of the biblical material in Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical anthropology and the Monism-Dualism debate (Eerdmans, 2000 2^nd edition) which defends substance dualism. The discussion of first person, second person and third person perspectives draws on Henk Geertsema’s work in particular “Creation Order in the Light of Redemption (1): Natural Science and Theology” in The Future of Creation Order Vol. 1 edited by Gerrit Glas (Springer, 2018) .

The section on faith and religion (§ 35) draws more on Vollenhoven than Dooyeweerd see John Kok “Vollenhoven and ‘Scriptural Philosophy” PR 1988 53:2 and Vollenhoven “Faith”. Interestingly the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas makes some remarks in his work Totality and Infinity that confirm Vollenhoven’s notion of the transcosmic relation. See the section on “Creation” in the conclusions which begin with the sentence “Theology imprudently treats the idea of the relation between God and the creature in terms of ontology.” (293). On theology (§ 36) see Willem J, Ouweneel’s What then is Theology? An introduction to Christian Theology Paideia Press 2014 and Renato Coletto “Encyclopaedic models in the Kuyperian tradition (Part 3: towards a network-model)” Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap 2012: pp.43-63. §37 draws on Hendrik Hart Understand our World pp.318-324, Danie Strauss Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines pp.188-205, and Henk Geertsema “Wolterstorff and the philosophy of religion. About being and creation” in Essays in honour of Nicholas P. Wolterstorff. Edited by Henk E.S. Woldring. VU University Press 2008, 51-60. The discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma is indebted to Roy Clouser who has written incisively on this topic on the Thinknet discussion list.

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(37) God and philosophy

Theoretical analysis proceeds through the modal aspects and so it is only possible to analyse what is within the bounds of created reality. God is the origin of creation including our ability to think. The forming of concepts requires universal conditions or features that can be grasped in our thought. This means that having a concept of God would imply that there is an order for being-a-God, i.e. a law-for-being-a-God. Such a situation involves the contradiction that God, the origin of all things, would be viewed as being subject to God’s own law for creation.

This way of thinking about God is however common and can be designated with the term onto-theology. Ontology is the name given to philosophical theory that analyses the basic characteristics of reality, of what there is. Onto-theology then includes the being of God in this analysis. This can be traced back to Parmenides who made an all-encompassing connection between thinking and being such that the structure of being and the structure of thought are believed to mirror each other. Apart from the problems that arise through separating being and thinking and then trying to understand how and why they might correspond to each other, this position should be rejected on the basis that thinking belongs within being.  The consequence of an onto-theological approach is that questions about God are discussed and incorporated into the general theoretical framework of an ontology where being is analysed in terms of concepts and logic. On such a view philosophical thought is considered competent to discover structures to which God himself is subject. This involves taking a stance that is supposedly outside of the creator-creation relationship and so must take us beyond any creatureliness. Reformational philosophy does not recognise such a competence for philosophy, nor does it accept the possibility of such a stance outside creation. Philosophy cannot judge reality, it must discover, analyse, understand and respect what is given, this applies even more so to God’s self-revelation. 

One way this onto-theological approach gets worked out is in the so-called proofs of God’s existence. Dooyeweerd gives a brief discussion of the cosmological arguments of Thomas Aquinas (NC II, 39-42) where he shows that the argument will either start from a metaphysical view of causality which already includes the need for a pure actuality (identified as God), or it will understand causality in terms of human experience and so bring God’s being the cause or origin of the world under the conditions of a particular modal sense of causation. The former can hardly stand as a satisfactory proof and the latter creates various problems due to subjecting God to created conditions while simultaneously treating an aspect of creation as absolute.

A particularly clear issue where the question of God being subjected to creational laws is at stake is the Euthyphro dilemma first expressed by Plato in his dialogue of that name. The modern version goes like this: "Is the morally good loved by God because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by God". The first option makes God dependent and subservient to morality which is then understood as a standard that exists independently of God. The second option would seem to make morality arbitrary such that if God willed murder then murder would be good.

The solution to this dilemma is a correct understanding of the Christian confession of creation. We must insist from the outset that God has created everything that exists other than himself, and so reject the first option of the dilemma. However we can also reject the second option because the standards for good and evil are real factors of the world as created by God. From within creation there is nothing arbitrary about the command against murder, when God commands us not to murder this is revelatory of the way God made the world. The problem is that when we ask whether God “could” have commanded murder the word “could” is ambiguous. The only meaning it can have for us as creatures in the world God has made is restricted to the possibilities built into this world. It is important to see that we are here talking about the law-side of reality. We can certainly think about different responses from the subject-side and so the different kinds of “worlds” that would result from our choosing to murder or to resist the temptation to violence. The dilemma can only work then, if we project this “could” to a world of possibilities outside of this actual law-structured world. The problem with this is that we cannot think or imagine in a way that is completely outside of the actual law-structure since that is what gives us the possibility to think and imagine in the first place. What we will end up doing in the attempt to consider what is possible in an absolute sense is that we will keep our understanding of the world and its possibilities fixed for some creational laws while imagining a change in others. This is what is really happening when people ask if God could have commanded us to murder, or could God make 2+2=5, or create a round square etc. What this misses out is the indissoluble coherence of all creational laws so that it is impossible to conceive of a change in one creational law with all else staying fixed. A change of one law would require changes in all the others. As such it throws us back to the notion of a world of possibilities outside of this actual world, and so outside our own possibility to think. We can see then that God must be understood as the true origin of our world, and while God accommodates himself to the world he has made, we should never understand God as being subjected to the laws and conditions of his creation.

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Further Reading

(36) Faith and Theology

We should say something here about the study of faith which is theology. First attention needs to be made to the difference between the practical character of Christian life and faith and theology as a science, a theoretical enterprise.  It is unfortunate that some like to speak of the “theology” of the Apostles, or to think of the Bible as a book of theology.  For example, Paul’s use of the word “doctrine” (eg in 2 Timothy 3:10) indicates something that has to be “followed” not something that is primarily an object of academic study.  When as Christians we read and meditate on the Bible we do so for a practical purpose, to enter into a closer relationship with the Lord, to hear God’s Word in our hearts, to not only hear, but also to do the Word of God.  As such the difference between ordinary “Bible study” and theological study is very great, Ouweneel compares it to the difference between the eater and the chemist in the case of bread (Ouweneel 2014, 5). 

The relationship between theology and philosophy has been somewhat fraught in the history of western thought.  Since theology is a human activity it is far from static and undergoes constant development as can be seen from a comparison of a standard theological work from the 17^th century and one from the 21^st century.  Theology cannot avoid the powerful influence of “the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2), the spirits of the age or Zeitgeist.  The spirit of each age comes to fullest theoretical expression within the philosophies of each age, whether pagan Greek, scholastic, enlightenment or postmodern.  This, alongside the fact that theology is a special science, means that theology cannot avoid philosophical presuppositions. Unfortunately, one of the most persistent views among orthodox theologians concerning the relation between theology and philosophy is the scholastic separation between philosophy as essentially natural and religiously neutral academic pursuit and theology as uniquely Christian and sacred.  The reformational view is that philosophy is not religiously neutral and plays an important role in relation to the special sciences this means that the development of a Christian philosophy is vital for the continual task of a theoretically elaborated Christian theology.  There is a danger here though of a one-sided emphasis since philosophy never stands on its own but must be informed by the special sciences and this is no different for theology. This means that Christian theology may also play a role in serving the development of Christian philosophy.  Here we can recommend the work of Renato Coletto who has developed a “network” model, based on the Christian value of mutual service, of how the different sciences relate to each other including theology and philosophy. The persistent view that Christian thinking, in all its forms, is really essentially and only theological thinking is perhaps one of the biggest barriers to the genuine reformation of scholarship as envisioned by reformational philosophy.

The classic definition of theology, deriving from its name, is that theology is the science that studies God. This cannot be accepted on a reformational view since science proceeds through theoretical analysis that takes one of the modal aspects as its lens and God is not subject to the modal spheres, but rather is their creator. This means that God cannot be subjected to theoretical analysis. This would pose a serious problem if we restricted knowledge to theoretical knowledge as it would imply that knowledge of God would be impossible. However we have already indicated that religion is fundamental to our lives as made in God’s image and as always already responding to God in everything we do. As such knowledge of God is both as natural and as mysterious as knowledge of ourselves. While this knowledge can be considered theoretically, it is not itself theoretical. As with the difference between reading the Bible as followers of Jesus Christ and studying the Bible theoretically, which may be one part of our whole of life following of Jesus, there is a similar difference between knowing God and theoretically reflecting on that knowledge. We shall turn to the related question of God and philosophy in the next section.

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