The following is a short extract from Herman Dooyeweerd's book:
“Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options” (pdf file 11 meg).
Gheibhear íoslódáil (an asgaidh) dhen leabhar air fad aig:
The entire book can be downloaded (for free) at:
http://www.reformationalpublishingproject.com/rpp/search_books.asp
Creation, Fall, and Redemption
The second ground motive which shaped the development of western culture is the motive of creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit. The christian religion introduced this motive in the West in its purely scriptural meaning as a new religious community motive.
The Creation Motive
Already in its revelation of creation the christian religion stands in radical antithesis to the religious ground motive of Greek and Greco-Roman antiquity. Through its integrality (it embraces all things created) and radicality (it penetrates to the root of created reality) the creation motive makes itself known as authentic divine Word-revelation. God, the creator, reveals himself as the absolute, complete, and integral origin of all things. No equally original power stands over against him in the way that Anangke and Moira (blind fate) stood over against the Olympian gods. Hence, within the created world one cannot find an expression of two contradictory principles of origin.
Influenced by its motive of form and matter, Greek philosophy could not speak of a real creation. Nothing, the Greeks argued, could come from nothing. Some Greek thinkers, notably Plato, did hold that the world of becoming was the product of the formative activity of a divine, rational spirit; but under pressure from the ground motive of culture religion this divine formation could only be understood according to the pattern of human cultural formation. With Plato, for example, the divine mind, the Demiurge, was the great architect and artist who granted the world its existence. The Demiurge required material for his activity of formation. Due to the influence of the Greek matter motive, Plato believed that this material was utterly formless and chaotic. Its origin did not lie in divine Reason, since the Demiurge was only a god of form or culture. The Demiurge does not create; he simply furnishes matter with divine form. Matter retained the self-determining Anangke or blind fate, which was hostile to the divine work of formation. In Plato's famous dialogue Timaeus, which dealt with the origin of the world, the divine Logos checked Anangke merely by means of rational persuasion. The same principle was expressed by the great Greek poet Aeschylus. In his tragedy Oresteia, Anangke persecuted Orestes for matricide; Orestes had killed his mother because she had murdered his father. Likewise, for Plato's great pupil Aristotle pure form was the divine mind (nous), but Anangke, which permeated matter, was still the peculiar cause of everything anomalous and monstrous in the world. The earlier philosophers of nature gave religious priority to the motive of matter. Plato and Aristotle, however, shifted religious priority to the motive of form. For them matter was not divine. Nevertheless, the god of rational form was not the origin of matter. The god of form was not the integral, sole origin of the cosmos. Therein lay the apostate character of the Greek idea of god.
The Greek notion of god was the product of an absolutization of the relative. It arose from a deification of either the cultural aspect or the movement aspect of creation. It thus stood in absolute antithesis to God's revelation in the Bible and to God himself, the creator of heaven and earth. Consequently, a synthesis between the creation motive of the christian religion and the form-matter motive of Greek religion is not possible.
God's self-revelation as the creator of all things is inseparably linked with the revelation of who man is in his fundamental relationship to his creator. By revealing that man was created in God's image, God revealed man to himself in the religious root unity of his creaturely existence. The whole meaning of the temporal world is integrally (i.e., completely) bound up and concentrated in this unity. According to his creation order, Jehovah God is creaturely mirrored in the heart, soul, or spirit of man. This is the religious centre and spiritual root of man's temporal existence in all its aspects. Just as God is the origin of all created reality, so the whole of temporal existence was concentrated on that origin in the soul of man before the fall into sin. Therefore, in conformity with God's original plan, human life in all of its aspects and relations ought to be directed toward its absolute origin in a total self-surrender in the service of love to God and neighbour. As the apostle Paul said: "Whether you eat or whether you drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." [1 Corinthians 10:31. The Revised Standard Version is the translation used here and elsewhere, unless indicated otherwise. ]
Scripture teaches us not only that the heart or soul is the religious centre of the entire individual and temporal existence of man but also that each man is created in the religious community of mankind. This is a spiritual community; it is governed and maintained by a religious spirit that works in it as a central force. According to the plan of creation, this spirit is the Holy Spirit himself, who brings man into communion and fellowship with God. Not only the temporal existence of human beings but that of the whole temporal world was concentrated upon the service of God in this religious root community. God created man as lord of creation. The powers and potentials which God had enclosed within creation were to be disclosed by man in his service of love to God and neighbour. Hence in Adam's fall into sin, the entire temporal world fell away from God. This is the meaning of apostasy. The earth was cursed because of man. Instead of the Spirit of God, the spirit of apostasy began to govern the community of mankind and with it all of temporal reality. In contrast to mankind, neither the inorganic elements nor the kingdoms of plants and animals have a spiritual or religious root. It is man who makes their temporal existence complete. To think of their existence apart from man, one would need to eliminate all the logical, cultural, economic, aesthetic, and other properties that relate them to man. With respect to inorganic elements and plants, one would even need to eliminate their capability of being seen. Objective visibility exists only in relation to potential visual perception which many creatures do not themselves possess.
Along these lines the modern materialists, overestimating the mathematical, natural-scientific mode of thinking, tried quite seriously to grasp the essence of nature completely apart from man. Nature, they thought, was nothing more than a constellation of static particles of matter determined entirely by mechanical laws of motion. They failed to remember that the mathematical formulae which seem to grasp the essence of nature presuppose human language and human thought. They did not recognize that every concept of natural phenomena is a human affair and a result of human thinking. "Nature" apart from man does not exist. In an attempt to grasp "nature" one begins with an abstraction from given reality. This abstraction is a logical and theoretical activity which presupposes human thought. In a similar fashion the scholastic christian standpoint, influenced by Greek thought, held that inorganic elements, plants, and animals possess an existence of their own apart from man. The scholastics argued that the so-called material "substances" depend on God alone for their sustenance. But in the light of God's revelation concerning creation, this too cannot be maintained. In the creation order objective visibility, logical characteristics, beauty, ugliness, and other properties subject to human evaluation are necessarily related to human sensory perception, human conceptualization, human standards for beauty, etc. Both the former and the latter are created. They consequently cannot be ascribed to God the creator. God related all temporal things to man, the last creature to come into being. Temporal reality comes to full reality in man.
The scriptural motive of creation thus turns one's view of temporal reality around. It cuts off at the root every view of reality which grows out of an idolatrous, dualistic ground motive which posits two origins of reality and thus splits it into two opposing parts. Jehovah God is integrally, that is totally, the origin of all that is created. The existence of man, created in the image of God, is integrally, that is totally, concentrated in his heart, soul, or spirit. And this centre of existence is the religious root unity of all man's functions in temporal reality — without exception. Likewise, every other creature in temporal reality is integral and complete. It is not closed off within the few aspects abstracted by the natural sciences (number, space, motion), but in its relation to man it is embraced by all of the aspects of reality. The whole of the temporal world (and not just some abstracted parts) has its root unity in the religious community of mankind. Hence, when man fell away from God, so did all of temporal reality.
The Scriptural View of Soul and Body
In the years just prior to the second world war the question as to how we are to understand the human soul and its relation to the body in the light of God's Word was fiercely debated in Reformed circles. The arguments surrounding this question can be understood only with reference to the absolute antithesis between the scriptural ground motive and the religious ground motive of Greek thought.
Perhaps some readers impatiently wonder why I devote so much attention to the ancient ground motive of the Greeks. If it is true that our modern western culture came forth out of the conflicts and tensions of four religious ground motives, then it is simply impossible to enlighten the reader concerning the significance of the antithesis for today if it is not made clear that the present can be understood only in the light of the past. The most fundamental doctrines of the christian religion, including creation, fall, and redemption, are still influenced by the religious ground motive of ancient Greece. The Greek ground motive still causes strife and division among Christians today, and it is therefore imperative that we devote our time and attention to it.
The reader himself must penetrate to the bottom of the problems pertaining to the antithesis. In so doing he will gradually see that the christian religion itself fights a battle of life and death against all sorts of religious ground motives. In every fundamental issue of our times these motives try to grip the soul of modern man. A battle rages against those who consciously reject the christian ground motive and also against those who time after time rob it of its intrinsic strength by accommodating it to nonscriptural ground motives. It is a battle between the spirit of the christian religion and the spirit of apostasy. It is also a battle that cuts right through christian ranks and through the soul of the believer. What is the soul? Is this a question that only psychology can answer? If so, why has the christian church considered it necessary to make pronouncements concerning the relation of "soul" and "body" in its confessions? Perhaps, one might argue, the church confessions address the soul's imperishability, the soul's immortality, and the resurrection of the body in the last judgment, while philosophical psychology deals with the question as to what the "soul" actually is. This, however, places the christian church in a strangely contradictory position. What if psychology comes to the conclusion that a soul in distinction from the body does not exist? Or what if psychology gives an elaborate theory concerning the "essence of the soul" that is completely oriented to the ground motive of Greek philosophy or to the world view of modern humanism? Does not the christian church build on sand if it honours philosophical constructions of the soul predicated upon the concepts of "immortality" and "imperishability"? From its beginning, scholastic theology tried to push the church into this intrinsically contradictory position by allowing the Greek conception of the soul into the roman catholic confessions. But the radical antithesis between the ground motive of Holy Scripture and the ground motive of Greek "psychology" cannot be bridged. Any conception of body and soul that is determined by the Greek form-matter motive cannot stand before the face of revelation concerning creation, fall, and redemption.
The question as to what we are to understand by "soul" or "spirit" or "heart" asks where human existence finds its religious root unity. It is therefore a religious question, not a theoretical or scientific question. Augustine once made the remark that in a certain sense the soul is identical with our religious relationship to God. The soul is the religious focus of human existence in which all temporal, diverging rays are concentrated. The prism of time breaks up the light from which these rays come.
As long as we focus our attention on our temporal existence we discover nothing but a bewildering variety of aspects and functions: number, space, motion, organic functions of life, functions of emotional feeling, logical functions of thought, functions of historical development, social, lingual, economic, aesthetic, jural, moral, and faith functions. Where in the midst of these functions does the deeper unity of man's existence lie? If one continually studies the temporal diversity of the functions corresponding to the different aspects of reality investigated by the special sciences, one never arrives at true self-knowledge. One's gaze remains dispersed in the diversity. We can obtain genuine self-knowledge only by way of religious concentration, when we draw together the totality of our existence, which diverges within time in a multiplicity of functions, and focus it upon our authentic, fundamental relationship to God, who is the absolute and single origin and creator of all that is.
Because of the fall, however, man can no longer attain this true self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, according to scripture, is completely dependent on true knowledge of God, which man lost when apostate ground motives took possession of his heart. Man was created in God's image, and when man lost the true knowledge of God he also lost the true knowledge of himself.
An apostate ground motive forces a man to see himself in the image of his idol. For this reason Greek "psychology" never conceived of the religious root unity of man and never penetrated to what is truly called the "soul," the religious centre of human existence. When the matter motive dominated Greek thought, the soul was seen merely as a formless and impersonal life principle caught up in the stream of life. The matter motive did not acknowledge "individual immortality." Death was the end of man as an individual being. His individual life-force was destroyed so that the great cycle of life could go on. With orphic thought the soul came to be seen as a rational, invisible form and substance. It originated in heaven and existed completely apart from the material body. But this "rational soul" (in scholastic theology: anima rationalis) was itself nothing but a theoretical abstraction from the temporal existence of man. It embraced the functions of feeling, logical judgment and thought, and faith which, taken together, comprise only an abstracted part or complex of all the various functions. Together they constituted man's invisible form, which, just like the Olympian gods, possessed immortality. The material body, on the other hand, was totally subject to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The "rational soul" was characterized by the theoretical and logical function of thought. One finds many differences in the development of this philosophical conception. Plato and Aristotle, for example, changed their views throughout the different phases of their lives. I will not pursue this here, but it is important to mention that their conception of the rational soul was inseparably related to their idea of the divine. Both Plato and Aristotle believed that the truly divine resided only in theoretical thought directed to the imperishable and invisible world of forms and being. The aristotelian god was absolute theoretical thought, the equivalent of pure form. Its absolute counterpart was the matter principle, characterized by eternal, formless motion and becoming. If the theoretical activity of thought is divine and immortal, then it must be able to exist outside of the perishable, material body. To the Greeks the body was actually the antipode of theoretical thought. For this reason, the "rational soul" could not be the religious root unity of temporal human existence. Time after time the ambiguity within the religious ground motive placed the form principle in absolute opposition to the matter principle. The ground motive did not allow for a recognition of the root unity of human nature. For Plato and Aristotle, just as God was not the creator in the sense of an absolute and sole origin of all that exists, so also the human soul was not the absolute root unity of man's temporal expressions in life. In conformity with their Greek conception, the soul's activity of theoretical thought always stood over against whatever was subject to the matter principle of eternal becoming. Greek thought never arrived at the truth, revealed first by Holy Writ, that human thinking springs from the deeper central unity of the whole of human life. Because this unity is religious, it determines and transcends the function of theoretical thought. Scripture says: "Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life" [Proverbs 4:23. "Biblical psychology" may not denature this to a mere expression of Jewish wisdom or understand it simply as a typical instance of Jewish language usage. Whoever reads scripture in this way fails to recognize that scripture is divine Word-revelation which can only be understood through the operation of the Holy Spirit out of its divine ground motive.
The pregnant religious meaning of what the soul, spirit, or heart of man actually is cannot be understood apart from the divine ground motive of creation, fall, and redemption. Whoever takes his stand upon this integral and radical ground motive comes to the conclusion that there is an absolute and unbridgeable antithesis between the Greek conception of the relation between the soul and the body and the scriptural conception of the christian religion. The former is determined by the apostate ground motive of form and matter while the latter is determined by the scriptural ground motive of creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus Christ. The former, at least as long as it follows the Greek ground motive in its dualistic direction, leads to a dichotomy or split in the temporal existence of man between a "perishable, material body" and an "immortal, rational soul." The scriptural ground motive of the christian religion, however, reveals to us that the soul or spirit of man is the absolute central root unity or the heart of the whole of his existence, because man has been created in God's image; further, it reveals that man has fallen away from God in the spiritual root of his existence; and, finally, it reveals that in the heart or focal point of his existence man's life is redirected to God through Christ's redemptive work.
In this central spiritual unity man is not subject to temporal or bodily death. Here too the absolute antithesis obtains. In distinction from the Greek-orphic belief in immortality that permeated scholastic theology by way of Plato and Aristotle, scripture teaches us nowhere that man can save a "divine part" of his temporal being from the grave. It does not teach us that an invisible, substantial form or an abstract complex of functions composed of feeling and thinking can survive bodily death. While it is true that temporal or bodily death cannot touch the soul or spirit of man, the soul is not an abstraction from temporal existence. It is the full, spiritual root unity of man. In this unity man transcends temporal life.
Fall, redemption through Jesus Christ, and the revelation of creation are unbreakably connected in the christian ground motive. Apostate ground motives do not acknowledge sin in its radically scriptural sense; for sin can only be understood in true self-knowledge, which is the fruit of God's Word-revelation. To be sure, Greek religious consciousness knew of a conflict in human life, but it interpreted that conflict as a battle in man between the principles of form and matter. This battle became apparent in the conflict between uncontrolled sensual desires and reason. Sensual desires, which arose from the life stream and ran through the blood, could be bridled only by reason. In this view reason was the formative principle of human nature, the principle of harmony and measure. Sensual desires were formless and in constant flux; they were beyond measure and limit. The matter principle, the principle of the ever-flowing life stream, became the self-determining principle of evil. The orphics, for example, believed that the material body was a prison or grave for the rational soul. Whoever capitulated to his sensual desires and drives rejected the guidance of reason. He was considered morally guilty in this Greek conception. Nevertheless, reason was often powerless before Anangke, the blind fate that was at work in these boundless drives. Hence the state with its coercive powers needed to help the average citizen grow accustomed to virtue.
Modern humanism recognized a battle in man only between sensual "nature" (controlled by the natural-scientific law of cause and effect) and the rational freedom of human personality. Man's moral duty was to act as an autonomous, free personality. If he showed a weakness for sensual "nature," he was considered guilty. Humanism, however, does not show man a way of redemption. The contrasts between matter and form in Greek ethics and between nature and freedom in humanistic ethics were operative not in the religious root of human life but in its temporal expressions. However, they were absolutized in a religious sense. This meant that the Greek and humanistic notions of guilt depend strictly on the dialectical movements between the opposing poles of both ground motives. Guilt arose from a devaluation of one part of man's being over against another (deified) part. In reality, of course, one part never functions without the other. We shall see that roman catholic doctrine circumvents the radically scriptural meaning of the fall with the idea that sin does not corrupt the natural life of man but only causes the loss of the supratemporal gift of grace. It does admit that "nature" is at least weakened and wounded by original sin. But the dualism between nature and grace in the roman catholic ground motive stands in the way of understanding the real meaning of sin, even if roman catholic doctrine far surpasses Greek thought and humanism with respect to the notion of guilt.
Common Grace
In its revelation of the fall into sin, the Word of God touches the root and the religious centre of human nature. The fall meant apostasy from God in the heart and soul, in the religious centre and root, of man. Apostasy from the absolute source of life signified spiritual death. The fall into sin was indeed radical and swept with it the entire temporal world precisely because the latter finds its religious root unity only in man. Every denial of this radical sense of the fall stands in direct opposition to the scriptural ground motive, even if one maintains the term radical, like the great humanistic thinker Kant, who spoke of "radical evil" (Radikal-böse) in man. Any conception which entails this denial of the biblical meaning of radical knows neither man, God, nor the depth of sin.
The revelation of the fall, however, does not imply a recognition of an autonomous, self-determining principle of origin opposed to the creator. Sin exists only in a false relation to God and is therefore never independent of the creator. If there were no God there could be no sin. The possibility of sin, as the apostle Paul profoundly expressed it, is created by the law. Without the law commanding good there could be no evil. But the same law makes it possible for the creature to exist. Without the law man would sink into nothingness; the law determines his humanity. Since sin therefore has no self-determining existence of its own over against God the creator, it is not able to introduce an ultimate dualism into creation. The origin of creation is not twofold. Satan himself is a creature, who, in his created freedom, voluntarily fell away from God.
The divine Word — through which all things were created, as we learn from the prologue to the Gospel of John — became flesh in Jesus Christ. It entered into the root and temporal expressions, into heart and life, into soul and body of human nature; and for this very reason it brought about a radical redemption: the rebirth of man and, in him, of the entire created temporal world which finds in man its centre. In his creating Word, through which all things were made and which became flesh as Redeemer, God also upholds the fallen world through his "common grace," that is, the grace given to the community of mankind as such, without distinction between regenerate and apostate persons. For, also redeemed man continues to share in fallen mankind in his sinful nature. Common grace curbs the effects of sin and restrains the universal demonization of fallen man, so that traces of the light of God's power, goodness, truth, righteousness, and beauty still shine even in cultures directed toward apostasy. Earlier we pointed to the meaning of Roman civil law as a fruit of common grace.
In his common grace God first of all upholds the ordinances of his creation and with this he maintains "human nature." These ordinances are the same for Christians and nonchristians. God's common grace is evident in that even the most antigodly ruler must continually bow and capitulate before God's decrees if he is to see enduring positive results from his labours. But wherever these ordinances in their diversity within time are not grasped and obeyed in the light of their religious root (the religious love commandment of service to God and neighbour), a factual capitulation or subjection to these ordinances remains incidental and piecemeal. Thus apostate culture always reveals a disharmony arising out of an idolatrous absolutization of certain aspects of God's creation at the cost of others. Every aspect, however, is just as essential as the others.
God's common grace reveals itself not only in the upholding of his creation ordinances but also in the individual gifts and talents given by God to specific people. Great statesmen, thinkers, artists, inventors, etc. can be of relative blessing to mankind in temporal life, even if the direction of their lives is ruled by the spirit of apostasy. In this too one sees how blessing is mixed with curse, light with darkness. In all of this it is imperative to understand that "common grace" does not weaken or eliminate the antithesis (opposition) between the ground motive of the christian religion and the apostate ground motives. Common grace, in fact, can be understood only on the basis of the antithesis. It began with the promise made in paradise that God would put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman out of which Christ would be born. The religious root of common grace is Christ Jesus himself, who is its king, apart from whom God would not look upon his fallen creation with grace. There should no longer be any difference of opinion concerning this matter in Reformational-christian circles. For if one tries to conceive of common grace apart from Christ by attributing it exclusively to God as creator, then one drives a wedge in the christian ground motive between creation and redemption. Then one introduces an internal split within the christian ground motive, through which it loses its radical and integral character. (Radical and integral here mean: everything is related to God in its religious root.) Then one forgets that common grace is shown to all mankind — and in mankind to the whole temporal world — as a still undivided whole, solely because mankind is redeemed and reborn in Christ and because mankind embraced in Christ still shares in fallen human nature until the fulfilment of all things. But in Christ's battle against the kingdom of darkness, Christ's kingship over the entire domain affected by common grace is integral and complete. For this reason, it is in common grace that the spiritual antithesis assumes its character of embracing the whole of temporal life. That God lets the sun rise over the just and the unjust, that he grants gifts and talents to believers and unbelievers alike — all this is not grace for the apostate individual, but for all of mankind in Christ. It is gratia communis, common grace rooted in the Redeemer of the world.
The reign of common grace will not cease until the final judgment at the close of history, when the reborn creation, liberated from its participation in the sinful root of human nature, will shine with the highest perfection through the communion of the Holy Spirit. God's righteousness will radiate even in satan and in the wicked as a confirmation of the absolute sovereignty of the creator.
Shown to his fallen creation as a still undivided totality, the revelation of God's common grace guards scriptural Christianity against sectarian pride which leads a Christian to flee from the world and reject without further ado whatever arises in western culture outside of the immediate influence of religion. Sparks of the original glory of God's creation shine in every phase of culture, to a greater or lesser degree, even if its development has occurred under the guidance of apostate spiritual powers. One can deny this only with rude ingratitude.
It is the will of God that we have been born in western culture, just as Christ appeared in the midst of a Jewish culture in which Greco- Roman influences were evident on all sides. But, as we said earlier, this can never mean that the radical antithesis between christian and apostate ground motives loses its force in the "area of common grace." The manner in which scriptural Christianity must be enriched by the fruits of classical and humanistic culture can only be a radical and critical one. The Christian must never absorb the ground motive of an apostate culture into his life and thought. He must never strive to synthesize or bridge the gap between an apostate ground motive and the ground motive of the christian religion. Finally, he must never deny that the antithesis, from out of the religious root, cuts directly through the issues of temporal life. (Herman Dooyeweerd)