Kyle Dillion has written a summary and response to John Bolt's "Doubting
Reformational anti-Thomism" a chapter in Aquinas Among the Protestants.
Bolt has also criticised Dooyeweerd in his review "An Adventure in Ecumenicity: A Review Essay of Berkouwer
and Catholicism by Eduardo Echeverria". Below is the response
I wrote to that piece. It was first published on the now defunct
reformational scholarship blog.
John Bolt’s “An Adventure in Ecumenicity” is billed as a
review of Berkouwer and Catholicism by Eduardo Echeverria, however, it
is both more and less than that. It is less since we do not find out much about
Echeverria’s book! Of the 14 pages of the review only three paragraphs actually
reference the book and they are largely used to introduce his main target:
Herman Dooyeweerd and reformational philosophy (who nevertheless are nowhere
directly quoted). It is more since the main purpose of the review, so it
appears, is to express the annoyance and dissatisfaction with what he, from his
North American context, has experienced as reformational philosophy. And
further the rejection of natural theology that first struck him as problematic
in his Seminary days of studying Berkouwer (77).
His
criticism of Dooyeweerd and reformational philosophy is that they subscribed to
“progressive biblicism,” a term he borrows from Valentijn Hepp who had
criticised Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven in these terms during the 1930s. For
Bolt, this progressive biblicism in its “most gentle and kind” form “gives full
respect to the confessions in general but bypasses them on a few key doctrines
where it judges to have found a more biblical approach. It appeals to the Bible
but does not take very seriously the full tradition of the church on these
points, preferring to go its own way. Included among these doctrines are the
body/soul duality and the continued existence of the soul after death.” (85).
Despite being the most gentle and kind form it nevertheless evinces, according
to Bolt, an “individualistic approach to Scripture” (86 quoting Hepp), that
lacks “the most basic level of Christian humility” (87). It also falls into “a
serious epistemological blunder” in trying to use the Bible to “produce a pure
biblical philosophy” (88). This progressive Biblicism produced, in the circle
of reformational philosophy, a “Biblicism of infinite regress”. Bolt
describes this over four points. First Kuyper and Bavinck are praised by
Dooyeweerd for breaking with certain scholastic tendencies, but secondly this
break is considered incomplete and so further criticism and philosophical
revision is required. Thirdly Cornelius Van Til repeats the first two moves
with respect to Dooyeweerd; praise for his move away from certain philosophical
notions but criticism that he has not gone far enough. Finally Dooyeweerd
“returns the favour, and the disciples of the two men continue the process ad
infinitum, ad nauseum, all in the name of finding the true, biblical or
reformational philosophy” (87).
While Bolt
has other complaints against Dooyeweerd, such that his interpretation and
criticism of Thomas Aquinas (and Catholic thought in general) has been
thoroughly invalidated, and that his philosophy is a symptom of a misguided
de-hellenizing project, I think the above fairly summarises his main concern in
this review.
We shall
work backwards through the objections and complaints against Dooyeweerd. So the
first thing to say is that nowhere does Dooyeweerd, or any other reformational
philosophy, ever claim that they are seeking to establish “the true,
biblical or reformational philosophy”. In the preface to his magnum opus De
Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee translated and revised in the 1950s as A New
Critique of Theoretical Thought (NC), Dooyeweerd is emphatic that the
Christian Idea of science “is not a matter of a ‘system’ (subject to all the
faults and errors of human thought) but rather it concerns the foundation and
the root of scientific thought as such” (NC I. viii). Elsewhere he writes, “The
first systematic statement of the Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee in my book
of that title is truly not meant to be a conclusion. It is a modest first attempt
at a systematic Calvinist philosophy” (quoted in Verburg 2015, 252). In 1973 he
was asked what reformational philosophy would look like in fifty years time,
Dooyeweerd replied “That I don’t know. It is possible that it will have
disappeared. And I would not mind that, if it had indeed done its work”
(Verburg, 483). The point here is that Dooyeweerd sought to discover the
religious root of theoretical thinking to show that an intentionally and
integrally Christian philosophy could be possible. He consistently distinguished
between this religious root, which is pre-theoretical and is a driving force in
our thinking, and the theoretical development of philosophical problems which
is fallible and subject to the standards for coherent and meaningful
philosophy.
When we understand
this purpose we can see that what is essential is the foundation or root of
philosophy, and it is here where “something permanent can be achieved” that is
“with respect to the actualization of the idea concerning an inner reformation
of philosophy” (NC I, ix). This task of “an inner reformation of philosophy” is
ongoing and never finished. Does this imply an infinite regress? No, because it
is no different from the ongoing task of systematic theology to be submitting
itself to the final authority of scripture and to articulate the doctrines of
the church afresh for each generation. We can also see that Dooyeweerd was not
trying to derive a true philosophy from the Bible as Bolt seems to suggest.
Indeed Dooyeweerd wrote, “The divine Word-revelation gives the Christian as
little a detailed life- and worldview as a Christian philosophy, yet it gives
to both simply their direction from the starting-point in their central
basic motive. But this direction is really a radical and integral
one, determining everything.” (NC I, 128). It is interesting that Bolt’s
solution to the problem of a Christian approach in the sciences is that we
should judge whether a particular approach is “consistent with or at
odds with biblical teaching” (88). This appears to be a rather external
view of the role of religion in science and is a significant step back from how
he describes the Roman Catholic view as developed by the nouvelle theologie
theologians “who insisted that human reason always operates within a teleology
of belief and unbelief” (80).
Nevertheless
Bolt seems to want to side-step the question as to whether a doctrine such as
the substantiality and immortality of the soul is “consistent with or at
odds with biblical teaching” since that could lead to bypassing the
confessions on a few key doctrines. Instead Christian thinkers must align
themselves “philosophically with the Augustinian/Thomistic tradition of
Christian metaphysics” (89) or condemn themselves to the charge of “lacking the
most basic level of Christian humility” (87).
No comments:
Post a Comment