Gobha-Uisge ri Plubraich

A Poem for Dionne

2011-12-07T19:32:00.001Z

A POEM FOR DIONNE
(For Nurse Dionne Franklyn,Ward 7 (neurological),
Royal Hospital for SickChildren, Edinburgh, 1990)

As the exact white form of the Moon
Completes her comforting brave-faced round;
Parting the curtains of desolate Night,
Being both symbol and earnest substance of the Light
So you, Dionne the Nurse, traversed and graced
That God-riddled, time-fractured wilderness;
Favoured the huddled Abrahamic tent
Where lay my brain-struck only son
And I, bent over him,
The past a blur, the future blank,
The trackless present freeze-framed in hope
That I might see again a finger move
Or hear a word, or be assured
He knew no pain (Ciaran! My Son! My Son!);
I went colour-blind, tunnel-visioned
Through that sterile land.
No horizon quickened,
No sky shone kind beyond the vitreous sand;
The flowers faded, stiffened as they dried.
Wall-eyed, I carried him when he tearless cried.
But you bathed him with your gentle humour,
Buoyed him with photos of your dippy dog -
"Here's Kally with a big blue balloon in her teeth!
And she didn't even burst it! Imagine!" –

Then that morning
When you bade him choose a T-shirt
And he slowly raised
A palsied hand.

A hand heavier to lift
And more profound
Than all the Moon-bound oceans
Of the round blue Earth.

Dooyeweerd: Marriage & Family

2011-11-18T23:04:00.001Z

Rembrandt: "Het Joodse Bruidje"

The main text below is an abridged extract from "A New Critique of TheoreticalThought" by Herman Dooyeweerd, Vol.III, 1969. (pp 266-345)

NOTES: Herman Dooyeweerd 1894-1977. Original Dutch version of main work De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee 1935-6. Revised and expanded in English as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought 1953-8

MAIN WEBSITES for further exploration of Dooyeweed's thought:

Dr J. Glenn FRIESEN: Studies Relating to Herman Dooyeweerd
(Emphasis on profundity of Dooyeweerd's key "supratemporal heart" insight, on his experiential non-dualism, and on the historical roots and continuity of his thought)

Andrew BASDEN: The Dooyeweerd Pages
(Very extensive ongoing contextual engagement with implications of Dooyeweerd's thinking for society, technology, and all areas of life)

THE STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE OF THE NATURAL FAMILY.

The extremely rich structure of procreation by which a human pair bringforth children in the closest possible interconnection of two temporalexistences, is certainly not to be understood entirely in terms of biology, andnot at all in functional terms.

Nevertheless, the structural typicalness of human reproduction isundoubtedly biotically founded; its functions in post-biotic modalities restupon a typical biotic substratum. Intersexual procreation and descent reveal anoriginal modal type of individuality only in the biotic law-sphere.

But it is clear that blood-relation in its typical biotic sense is notable to qualify the human family-bondbetween parents and children.

The biotic function cannot be considered to be the "leading"function of this community. Only the radical type "plant" is qualified as atypical biotic subject. Even the bond between animals and their young isdirected in its inner structure by a later leading function, namely, by thesensory instinctive impulse of care and protection founded in the bioticblood-relationship.

The typical leading function of the immediate family-relationship.Refutation of the opinion that the latter does not have a typical leadingfunction which qualifies its inner destination.

What then is the typical leading or qualifying function in the innerstructure of the immediate family-bond?

We have seen that the universalist Aristotelian-Thomistic conception hasin fact eliminated this structural problem by conceiving the relationshipbetween parents and their children under age as a part of the domesticcommunity. The latter was viewed as an economic unity, embracing primarily therelation between the domestic chief and his servants, and in addition thatbetween husband and wife. The relation between parents and children was thenconceived under the general teleological viewpoint of a rational and moralperfection of the undeveloped human nature of the children resulting in theireducation to good citizens. In the Thomistic theory this natural educationrequires its supra-natural completion by forming the children into good sonsand daughters of the Church, as the institution of grace.

This entire view is not concerned with the inner nature of the immediate family-bond. Much rather itis directed to the natural and supra-natural aims to which this relationship isserviceable. But does the latter actuality have a typical qualifying functionwhich determines its innerdestination? Is it not exactly the rich and universal character both of thematrimonial and the family bond that they are all-inclusive or"supra-functional" vital communities, in contradistinction to thearbitrary associations formed for specific purposes?

This question ought to be examined closely. It originates in a verygenerally held notion of the universality of the natural family, as the primalcell of society. The word "universality" carries with it a particular temptation, which becomes dangerousif one loses sight of the inner structural delimitations which the temporal world-order places in the way of all universalist constructions.

The absolutization of a specific modal aspect of ourexperiential horizon appeared also to be defended by an appeal to itsuniversality. It was, therefore, necessary, in our analysis of the modalstructures in Volume II, to show how this universality is limited by the cosmictemporal order. The universality of every modal sphere turned out to be boundto its inner specific structure, which excludes every attempt at its elevationto a whole encompassing all the other modalities.

The tempting appeal to the all-inclusiveness or universality of theintimate bonds encountered in marriage and the family ought not to distract usfrom our aim to discover their intrinsic structural laws.

Insofar as this appeal to universality is intended to arrest our searchfor the typical qualifying function of the family, it contains a two-foldmisunderstanding. It is consciously or unconsciously affected by theundifferentiated Aristotelian conception of a household with its threefoldauthoritarian relation. And it is guilty of a confusion repeatedly mentionedbetween the internal destination and the external functional objectives of acommunity. The inner structural limitation displayed by a communal relationshipbecause of its typical leading or qualifying function, is in no way opposed tothe universality of the internal societal bonds, in the sense of all-sidedness.But through its leading function all relations within a community receive theirtypical qualification and inner direction. The latter is in no way related tothe external "ends" of a communal whole.

We admit that the separation of the inner structure of a family from theorganized communities with an undifferentiated inner destination, pre-supposesthe differentiating process in the development of civilization. Thisdifferentiating process, however, concerns only the positive forms of actualtransitory societal relationships. Theirinner structural principles cannot be a product of this historical process,because structural differentiation pre-supposes the constant validity of theseprinciples.

Even when on a lower cultural level a natural family relationship isenkaptically bound in a primitive undifferentiated organized community like thesib or the domestic community, its inner structural principle is the same as that of a modern family that has beenemancipated from this enkaptic interlacement.

Undoubtedly it makes a great difference for the concrete positive formof the family whether or not the differentiating process has taken place.Nevertheless, even in Greek and Roman antiquity the undifferentiated householdwas never identical with the actual natural family relationship, even thoughthe positive forms of Greek and Roman family life were closely connected withthe former.

Returning to our question we must answer that the denial of a typicalleading and qualifying function in the natural immediate family relationship isidentical with the denial of its entire typical structural principle,established by the order of creation.

The natural community between a couple of parents and their childrenunder age is not a relationship with an undifferentiated inner destination. Ifit were, it would disappear in the advance of the differentiating process inhistorical development. It would then be a rudiment of a former historicalphase. But this view is refuted by the facts.

Holy Scripture throws a quite different light on the natural communalbond of the family in its most narrow sense, even though it does not give us atheoretical analysis of its typical inner structure. It presents the family asa typical normative bond of love, based upon the natural ties of blood betweenparents and their immediate off-spring. This is a reflection of the bond oflove between the Heavenly Father and His human children, unbreakably bound tothe tie between Christ and his Church.

…..

(p 283) The insight into the structural principles of naturaland organized communities and inter-communal or inter-individual relationshipsnecessarily leads to the recognition of their inner sphere-sovereignty alsowithin the modal juridical aspect. This does not mean a relapse into arationalistic metaphysical theory of natural law. It is simply the necessaryconclusion from the biblical Christian view of the sovereignty of God, Whoseorder of creation also embraces the structural principles of the differentsocietal relationships, guaranteeing the inner proper nature of each of them.The Christian view of law has found its most pregnant expression in therecognition of this juridical sphere-sovereignty. But the concrete significanceof this fundamental legal principle can only be discussed in connection withthe investigation of the enkaptic intertwinements between the different typesof societal relationships.

…..

(p 286) In a differentiated modern society, the culturaleducation of the children is as a rule completely concentrated in the innerfamily sphere only in the first years of life of the infants.

...It isdoubtless true that modern psychology and pedagogy to a considerable degree mayhelp the parents in the fulfilment of their task when they meet with particulardifficulties due to an insufficient knowledge of the psychical [ie 'sensory' - FMF] and mentalcondition of the infant. But it would be a dangerous overestimation of scienceif it should be supposed that the formative educational task of the parents hadbetter be taken over by a skilled psychologist or pedagogue. The integralcharacter of the education in the family sphere is irreplaceable and in manyrespects decisive for the whole further life of the children. The childrenbelong to their parents in a personal sense as long as they have not reachedthe stage of maturity necessary for them to be considered as responsiblepersons in human society.

…..

(p 288) ....The modern differentiation of education is to a highdegree determined by its preparatory task with respect to the later functionsof the human person both in free society and in the State and the Church. Butin this entire differentiation the parental cultural shaping of the child inthe inner family sphere retains its irreducible and irreplaceable nature. Thisis why the ancient and modern totalitarian ideas of State education of thechildren contradict the divine world-order and are indeed inhuman anddestructive to human society.

....Finally the structure of the family relationship expressesitself in that typical unity in a multiplicity in which every child owes itsorigin to the sexual intercourse of one father and one mother. No humanlicentiousness in sexual matters can undo this state of affairs, that thereexists a wonderful numerical relation between parents and children. For fromthe bi-unity of the parents there comes into existence a third human being, afourth, etc., who all remain indissolubly bound to the parental bi-unity.

…..

(p 303)...Even in the purity of its structure according to thedivine will, the family is only a temporal expression of the religiousmeaningfulness of human communion in Christ, in His relation to the DivineFather as the Son. At this point we are confronted with an extremely importantstate of affairs which is valid for all human societal relationships.

…..

(p 304)....In its subjective temporal reality, affected by sin,a family relationship is indeed often a caricature of what it ought to be. Butaccording to the divine world-order, the anticipatory spheres of the structuralqualifying function of a family keep waiting for their disclosure in thetranscendental direction. They refer forward to the meaningfulness of love inChrist, in Whom God is our Father, and we are His children. In other words, thetypical leading function of a human societal relationship can only qualify theopening process of this individual relationship. But according to the divineworld-order this structure cannot be deprived of its direction to the fulness of meaning by arresting it in time. If, nevertheless, in a subjective sensethis is taking place, the family remains caught in the civitas terrena, thekingdom of darkness, and even family life becomes a judgment to man.

Marriage is a necessarily bi-unitary bond. Even in polygamythe marriage bond does not itself assume a multiple character.

The marriage bond is by nature incapable of any change in its individualmembers; it is essentially a bi-unity of husband and wife entirely dependent onthe individuality of the persons united in this communal bond.

In polygamy these things are essentially unaltered. The husband is notunited with more wives in one marriage bond, but in as many marriage bonds ashe has wives. This is striking evidence of the fact that polygamy is againstnature.

...Marriage, as such, does not allow of such a social form asthat of an authoritative organization in which there would be a unity in amultiplicity of more than two marriage partners. Human arbitrariness cannotalter this.

The marriage bond, as such, is typically founded in theinstitutional (and not in an incidental) sexual union of husband and wife,which is undoubtedly made serviceable for the propagation of the human race. Itis according to the order of the creation that normally marriage leads to theformation of a family. In other words, the typical foundational relationbetween the family and the conjugal bond implies the natural disposition of thelatter to procreation. In this sense marriage may be called the"germ-cell" of the family-relationship. Both communities remain mostintensely interwoven during the time of their actual existence.

Yet marriage, as a love-communion, maintains its own structurenotwithstanding its interwovenness with the family.

Is the conception of marriage as a legal institutioncontradictory to the view that marriage is qualified as a bond of love?

In ourview marriage is qualified as thepermanent typical bond of love between husband and wife. But does not thisconception contradict the traditional view very generally accepted both inChristian and Humanist circles, which in the marriage-bond assigns only a subordinate place to love? (That this isalso done by positivist sociologists is not to the point here, since theyintentionally eliminate the normative structural principles of societalrelationships.) And does not it rashly encourage the modern irrationalisticconception, already occurring in FICHTE'S actualism, in which the bond ofmarriage is made dependent on the actual subjective continuance of love between the marriage-partners? If in thissense love is considered to be the real meaning of the marriage-bond, does itnot follow that the entire institutional legal aspect of this community isignored?

We might have discussed this question implicitly when we examined thestructural principle of the family relationship, which we also qualified, inaccordance with its internal structure, as a typical bond of love. It is true,we sharply opposed the naturalistic misconception of the normative meaning oflove, but we did not yet consider the objections raised by the traditional viewagainst giving "primacy" to the love bond as the essential factorboth in the family and in marriage. This had a good reason. For it is theconnection between marriage and family that has always been the basis of thetraditional objections to the primacy of love in these communities. And it isthis connection which is at issue in the present context of our inquiry.

The traditional scholastical [deriving from Thomas Aquinas' synthesis of Aristotelian and Biblical thought - FMF] conception called marriage an essentiallylegal institution whose "essence" is determined by its natural aim,viz. the propagation of the human race. The natural law order — and in theRoman Catholic view also the divine supra-natural legal order of the Church —seemed to offer a firm foot-hold for this opinion to oppose the theory of the "primatusamoris" ["primacy of love" - FMF]. Conjugal love was thought ofonly as a variable and subjective feeling, unsuitable as a "basis"for a permanent life-companionship. Married affection was sometimes consideredto be a mere "instrument" for propagation, as the essential aim ofthe conjugal bond.

But the internal structural principle of the bi-unitary bond of marriagecannot be grasped with a juridical concept oriented to the natural (andeventually supra-natural) aim of this institution. If the marital community hasalso an internal juridical aspect, the typical character of the latter iscertainly not determined by the natural aim of propagation as assumed by thescholastic natural law view. Civil and canon law contain maritalregulations that are far from being a positive juridical expression of theessential inner nature of the institution of marriage. On the contrary, incomparison with the proper internal structural principle of the conjugal bondthey only have a formal and external character. The internal legal sphere ofmarriage, just like the internal law of the family, owes its qualificationexclusively to the internal structural principle as a whole. The idea that thejuridical function is the "leading" or "qualifying function" of this internal structure is untenable and in open conflictwith the Biblical view. Cf., for instance, Ephes. 5 : 31, where the bond ofmarried love is clearly conceived as qualifying the "being oneflesh". This bond of love has its religious consummation in Christ's loveof His Bride, the Church, which in the supratemporal fulness of meaning isalso one body with our Saviour:

30 οτι μελη εσμεν του σωματος αυτου εκ τηςσαρκος αυτου και εκ των οστεων αυτου 31 αντι τουτου καταλειψει ανθρωπος τονπατερα αυτου και την μητερα και προσκολληθησεται προς την γυναικα αυτου καιεσονται οι δυο εις σαρκα μιαν 32 το μυστηριον τουτο μεγα εστιν εγω δε λεγω εις χριστον και εις την εκκλησιαν

[30 for we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. 32. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (NIV)]

THOMAS AQUINAS also recognized that only as a love-bond marriageis a temporal expression of Christ's relation to His Church. (Cf. 4 Sent. dist.26q. 2, a.l. ad 3.)

As soon as the juridical viewpoint acquires the leading role inthe conjugal relationship, it is by nature an external legal viewpoint. And if the marriage-partners giveto an external legal order the leading role in their communal relationship, this is aclear evidence of the complete ruin of their inner bond. Nor can a civil orcanon legal order be the foundation ofmarriage in its inner structure. This foundation is of a biotic, not of ajuridical character. No doubt the juridical structural aspect of themarriage-institution cannot be eliminated, but this holds good for all itsother structural functions. [ie the "marriage-institution" - like every other "thing" - functions in all fifteen modalities (see also here and here), though it is "founded" in only one and is "qualified" by one other. Thus Dooyeweerd argues that the "marriage-institution" is founded in the "biotic" aspect, and qualified by the "ethical" aspect. - FMF]

Is the continuity of the marriage bond to be guaranteedexclusively by civil law or canon law?

Ifconjugal love is the qualification of the marriage bond, can the latter then becontinued when subjectively this love has vanished? And if the answer is in thenegative, does not this prove that only as a legal institution marriage cancontinue to exist, either regulated by civil or by canon law? Our answer isthat the marriage institution as such is identical with the structuralprinciple of this community. We know that according to this structural principleits juridical aspect cannot be independent and self-contained. The inner natureof a marriage bond is not determined by a consensual agreement between twopersons of different sex which satisfies the conditions determined by civil orcanon law. Those who unite as husband and wife enter into an institutionalcommunity whose structure is no way dependent on their subjective arbitrary discretion.

From the outset they are subjectedto its institutional law.

The normative character of the institution of marriage implies that itscontinuous identity cannot be dependent on the arbitrary way in which frommoment to moment the subjects behave in this structural bond. But this does notmean that the continuous identity of the bi-unitary bond of marriage is to befound only on its law-side. There cannot exist any individual community if itsstructural principle is not subjectively realized to some degree. The unity induality existing between husband and wife should be realized subjectively, be it in an imperfect way, in aconstant subjective vital union of the above-mentioned structure. In thissinful world the marriage-partners by no means always behave conformably tothis structural law.

Butmay we yet speak of a marriage bond if the partners constantly adopt an anti-normative attitude with reference tothe internal structural principle of their union and continually live togetherlike strangers, or even enemies? In such a case there is no denying that the internal bond of marriage is not subjectively realized, noteven in a very imperfect way. Unfortunately this is the state of affairs inmany a marriage contracted rashly or from utilitarian motives. Then sinmercilessly puts to shame the tenderest and most intense temporal bond that Godin His order of creation has given to man as a task.

The true sense of the civil law (or, at a more primitivestage of society, the tribal law) and the canon law regulations of marriage.Their relation to the internal structural principle of the marriage bond.

Butthough as to its internal side a marriage is not subjectively realized, orruined hopelessly, with regard to its external relaetions in human society it is not thereby ipso jure [by law itself - FMF] dissolved.

The marriage bond functions in numerous enkaptic interweavings, and assuch it is never a matter that concerns husband and wife only in their relationto each other and to God. It is, just as the family, a pillar of human society.According to the divine order of creation it is a union for life. For thesereasons the formal dissolution of the marriage bond may not be left to thesinful arbitrariness of the marriage-partners, especially not in times whenpublic opinion no longer respects the institutional character of thisbi-unitary community.

If marriage can be formally undone so easily, it spells ruin for humansociety. In its external enkaptic interweavings the conjugal bond comesespecially to the fore in its external function as a civil or (at a moreprimitive stage of society) a tribal law institution. Human licentiousness inthis field meets with an external constraint. In case the internal marriagebond has been definitively broken, only the civil or tribal law order is ableeither to keep an external frame of the bond intact with the constraining powerof the State or the tribe, or to give a binding regulation of its formaldissolution. This is important for the external relations of this institution.Canon law on this point has no other primary function insofar as it is intendedas an authentic explanation of the so-called law of nature. Only in the Roman Catholic view of marriage as a sacrament are weconfronted with the enkaptic interweavings of marriage with the internal sphere of the Roman Catholic Church.

Civil law or tribal law respectively, regulate the general conditionsfor contracting or dissolving marriage, together with other points that are ofgeneral importance for the civil law relations or the tribal relationsrespectively, in which the marital bond functions. Canon law does the same fromthe Roman Catholic ecclesiastical viewpoint. The "lawfulness" of amarriage depends on its satisfying the general conditions of contracting itestablished by these legal orders. And it may occur that on that issue civillaw and canon law are in conflict with one another, though we shall show in ouranalysis of the inner nature of ecclesiastic law that this can only be causedby disregarding the inner boundaries of the State's or the Church's competenceto law making. In other words, in the regulation of these enkapticinterweavings of marriage with other societal relationships it is really thecivil, or tribal, or canon law function of marriage that takes the lead.

Under this leading the external framework of the marriage institution,i.e. its social form, is maintained also in its other modal functions.(Witness, for instance, the external forms of social interaction in which theformal appearance of marriage is maintained even though the true internalbi-unitary bond has been broken). But this external legal framework of marriageshould not be confounded with the internal structural principle of thisbi-unitary community. The proper internal stability of the latter must never befounded in its supposed essence as a civil, or an ecclesiastical institution.This internal unity cannot at all be maintained by any external legal order, asit can only be realized under the leading of faithful married love.

The false legalistic view of the question concerning divorce.

Christ's pronouncement in the question of divorce was in particulardirected against the confusion of the inner institutional structure ofmarriage, in its reference to the Kingdom of God, with its externalinstitutional aspect. The whole problem of divorce had been obscured by rabbinicallegal formalism. And it is nothing but a relapse into this legalistic viewof the matrimonial bond if one tries to derive from the New Testament legalprinciples for a civil lawregulation of the grounds of divorce. These grounds can only refer to the external legalframe of marriage. They can never replace the personal responsibility of the partners in their internal relation to one another underthe structural norm of the institution and the central commandment of love.From the internal moral point of view it is not possible to indicate generalgrounds of divorce. And the civil legislator should be aware that the legaldetermination of such grounds will always remain defective and liable toevasion. The fact that Christians have come to look upon the marriage bond asessentially a juridical institution must be denounced as a fundamentaldeformation of the Biblical view of this natural community.

The Thomistic view of the natural essential character ofmarriage in connection with the theory of the bona matrimonii. Marriage as an institution of natural law.

In his later systematic elaboration of the theory of the bonamatrimonii THOMAS AQUINAS related themarriage institution primarily toits cosmic purpose of propagating the human race. To him this purpose was thereal natural essence of the marital bond.This theory, already mentioned in an earlier context, was bound to favour auniversalistic view of marriage which seeks to understand the essence of thisinstitution from its enkaptichttp://www.dooy.salford.ac.uk/enkapsis.html interweavings in the family, the State and theChurch (in HOEGEN's very able thesis, cited in a later context, we find thefollowing statement, on page 52: "The essence of marriage is determined byits purpose." This is an orthodox piece of Thomism.)

We have established that it is exactly the civil and (with respect tothe R.C. Church) the canon law regulations of marriage which in modern Westernsociety play a central and leading role in these enkaptic interweavings. That is why thetraditional theory of the bona matrimonii[ie marriage goods/ marriage blessings/ advantages of marriage (see Wiki)] could not but strongly favour the idea of primacy of the legal institution inthe marriage bond. Thus to canonists as well as to Roman Catholic moralphilosophers marriage remained both a divine and a natural lawinstitution, which Christ had elevated to a"sacrament". In a purely Thomistic-Aristotelian way this conceptionof marriage as an institution of natural law has been elaborated in our days,e.g. in CATHREIN's ethical philosophy [Moralphil. II (6th ed. 1924) § 3: Die Ehe als naturrechtliche Institution]. Typical of the universalistic attitudein this view is CATHREIN's pronouncement: 'Therefore, according to its nature,marriage is an institution whose principal aim is not the personal welfare of the marriage-partners, but that of thehuman species, the honourable maintenance and propagation of the human race'. [Op. cit. p. 412. Die Ehe ist also ihrer Natur nach eine Institution, deren Hauptzweck nicht das persönliche Wohl der Ehegatten, sondern das Wohl der menschlichen Art (Gattung), die würdige Erhaltung und Fortpflanzung des Menschengeschlechts ist'.]

The traditional scholastic view ofmarriage as primarily a civil or canon law institution on the basis of the lawof nature has especially retained its influence among the modern Roman Catholiccanonists. One of the most prominent figures among them, R. von SCHERER.,writes: The decision to contract a marriage is eminently a matter of privatelaw (juris privati,) but the content andthe stability of marriage is rooted in the public law of the legal community,either of the State or of the Church, entirely apart from the creed, theopinion and the will of the contracting parties'.

A Roman Catholic reviewer of the Dutch edition of my work has observedthat this emphasizing of the legal aspect of marriage finds its explanation inthe fact that this bond is treated here only from the viewpoint of canon law.This remark, however, is not to the point. SCHERER's pronouncement that boththe content and the stability of marriage are rooted in the public law eitherof the State or of the Church clearly concerns the essence of the marriageinstitution as such, and not simply its external legal relations. It is true that the essential legal character of thisinstitution is viewed especially from the viewpoint of positive civil and canon law and that its foundation in naturallaw is presupposed. But this is indifferentto the conception of the marital community as an institution whose essence isdetermined by law in accordance with its natural aim, the propagation of thehuman race.

Agapè, eros andorginal sin in LUTHER. The influence of the Thomistic natural-law conception inscholastic Protestant ethics.

In the Reformation there did not provisionally come a permanentfundamental breach with the traditional view of the essence of marriage as anatural law institution.

At first LUTHER made an important attempt to arrive at a betterconception. He was the great antagonist of celibacy and to the vow of chastityon the part of priests and was fully alive to the unsatisfactory character ofthe theories of marriage propagated by medieval Scholasticism. It is true thathis definition of the marriage bond as "conjunctio unius maris et unius feminae inseparabilis, non tantumjuris naturae, sed etiam voluntatis et voluptatis, ut ita dicam, divinae" ["an inseparable joining of one male and one female, not only as a law of nature, but also, so to speak, in accord with divine favour and delight" - FMF] did not contain a clear characterization of the inner nature of thiscommunity. Nevertheless, in the explanation of the sixth commandment of thedecalogue in his great Catechism LUTHER emphatically established that in theinner sphere of marriage the bond of conjugal love takes the lead: 'Ubienim volumus conjugali castitati locum esse, ibi necesse est ante omnia, ut viret mulier in amore concordes conversentur, ut alter alterum ex animo mutuaquadam benevolentia et fide complectatur. Quod si praesto fuerit, ipsa quoquecastitas sua sponte sine mandato consequetur'.['For where we would wish the place of marital chastity/purity to be, the main requirement is that, as man and wife agreeably consort in love, there is a mutual kindness and faith from the soul, the said chastity/purity if forthcoming being present spontaneously and without compulsion.' - FMF]. This statement testifies to a conception of married love which is quitedifferent from the purely instrumental view of this love-bond as a necessarymeans serviceable to the realization of the natural aim of marriage, theprocreation. The latter view was for instance defended in the Spanishscholasticism of the 16th century by FRANCISCUS DE VITORIA in his Reflectiones Theologicae, where he observes that the natural aim ofmarriage is not to be realized "sine mutuo amore et animorumconcordia".["without mutual love and concord of minds" - FMF].

But the dualistic scheme of nature and grace, in its Lutheranconception, in addition burdened with the traditional Augustinian view ofsexual pleasure as an effect of original sin, made it impossible for him togain a pure insight into the marriage-structure as a whole. The sexual eros, as such, was ascribed to the corruption of humannature.

The result was that the internal structural unity of sexual and loveunion was split up in an irreconcilable dualism. The pre-Thomistic RomanCatholic view of marriage as a "sacrament" was meant to sanctify the supposed sinful sexualerotic basis of the conjugal union through the "means of grace of the Church".

This view was rejected by the Reformation, it is true, but in theLutheran conception the dualism of nature and grace and the relating of sexualpleasure qua talis [as such] to original sinretained its influence [In spite of his fundamental rejection of celibacy andthe vow of chastity of monks and nuns, LUTHER thereby remains very muchdependent on the Roman Catholic view of marriage as a "less perfectstate". This forms a striking contrast with CALVIN'S conception.]

By appealing to the Thomistic theory of the cosmic purposes of themarriage-institution it seemed to be possible to find a compromise between"sinful nature" and the order of creation. Sexual pleasure wasjustified in it in a rational "natural" way by an appeal to itsprocreative purpose. This explains why in the later Lutheran ethics of marriagegreat emphasis was laid on the divine and relatively natural law character ofthe marriage institution. It was considered a basic legal ordering of sexualintercourse including the duty of procreation. Nevertheless the reference ofmarriage to the union of Christ and His Bride, the Church, was not denied .

In this way the real marriage-problems were almost entirely relegated tothe domain of civil law, or that of consistorial law, and consequentlyexternalized.

Reformed ethics, too, as far as it was affected by Scholasticism, couldnot get free from the influence of this view.

In later times, under the influence of the Enlightenment, therationalistic conception of married love as essentially a "blindpassion" was especially prejudicial to a correct insight. When thisindividualistic rationalism found its way in Protestant ethics there was ofcourse no longer any possibility of a really Christian notion of married loveas the most intense moral bi-unity. Symptomatic is the utterance recorded by P.KLUCKHOHN [Die Auffassung der Liebe in der Literatur des 18. Jahrh. and in derdeutschen Romantik (Halle, 1922) p. 12.] of the methodist preacher WILLIAMWHITEFIELD (1714-1770), who boasted that in his proposal of marriage there hadbeen no question of love: "God be praised, if I know my own heart a littleI am free of that foolish passion which the world calls love". This showshow far the rationalistic utilitarian spirit of the Enlightenment hadpenetrated under the guise of Puritan piety [There is no doubt that at firstthe idea of the sinfulness of sexual love as such prevailed in Puritanism andthat its connection with a rationalistic utilitarianism was due to theinfluence of the Enlightenment. However, MARIANNE WEBER is right in saying (op.cit. p. 289) that Puritanism did not stop at a utilitarian view of marriage. Onthe contrary, it was, as she shows, precisely in these circles that theBiblical conception of the internal nature of marriage as a love-union betweenhusband and wife came strongly to the fore.]

The conception of the marital relationship under thecontractual viewpoint in canon law and in the Humanistic doctrine of naturallaw.

In the individualistic Humanistic doctrine of natural law the geneticjuridical form of the marriage bond was absolutized. This resulted in adenaturation of this natural community to a contractual relationship givingrise to mutual iura in re, viz. theright of using one another's body [Cf. e.g. Hugo de Groot][In Scots law, the rights of someone over the property of another is called Jura in re aliena.]. On the other hand,the contractual viewpoint was not consistently applied as long as one held tothe traditional conception of marriage as a permanent union which cannot bedissolved by mutual agreement. This conception was not seriously attackedbefore the time of the Enlightenment.

The juridical view of the matrimonial bond as a contract giving rise to iurain re was already developed in detail incanon law. But here the contractual viewpoint was not related to the essence ofthis institution, but only to marriage "in the state ofbecoming". In this restricted sense,as the "matrimonium in fieri" (not in esse), themarriage contract was viewed as the source of a real right of husband and wifeto each other's body and the mutual tradition and acceptance of this right wasrelated to the purpose of procreation as its "causa". Apart from its contractual source the rightmentioned was considered to be essential to the matrimonial bond.

Thus the Spanish canonist THOMAS SANCHEZ explicitly taught that the essence of marriage is found in the "traditiocorporum" ["giving of bodies" - FMF], by means of which each ofthe partners obtains the ownership of the other's body. KANT, too, was unableto free himself of this view. This is all the more remarkable because in hisconception the Humanistic law of nature ("Naturrecht"), developed under the primacy of the science-ideal,was turned into a law of reason("Vernunftrecht"), inwhich the personality-ideal is given priority. He even detaches the maritalrelationship from the procreative purpose and exclusively relates it to mutualsubjective sexual enjoyment. Hence hiscrude definition of the marriage bond as "the union of two persons ofdifferent sexes for the life-long mutual possession of each other's sexualqualities".

Reaction in post-Kantian German Idealism in favour of theconception that marriage is a love-union between husband and wife. The Romanticideal of "free love" versus the institutional character of marriage.

Not before post-Kantian German Idealism did the immoral character ofthis conception become apparent under the influence of the ascription ofabsolute supremacy to the Humanistic personality-ideal. And immediately thelove-relation between the conjugal partners found recognition as the essence ofthe marriage bond, in direct contrast with the earlier one-sided juridicalview.

But now the institutional character of marriage was seriously in dangerof being overlooked. For, in an irrationalist-dialectical way, married"love" was considered as a free, subjective higher feeling in which"nature" and "freedom" are dialectically united without anybinding to a general norm. Especially in Romanticism this view resulted in theglorification of the ideal of a love that should enjoy life in absolutefreedom. This conception implied an explicit opposition to the structural principleof the conjugal bond, to marriage as an institution. The stronglyaestheticistic character of the morality of men of genius current among theyounger Romantics did not belie its irrationalistic nature, although itsprotest against the traditional civil-juridical conception of marriage waspartly justified.

In FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL's novel "Lucinde" (1799) this Romantic ideal of free love, realizingitself in an high-minded harmony of sexual sensuality and spiritual surrender,found its most prominent literary expression. FICHTE, too, though by no means aRomantic, arrived on account of his actualistic [as opposed to "idealist" - FMF] view of sexual love at aconception of marriage which was incompatible with the institutional characterof this bi-unitary bond. In a typical functionalistic manner he thought hecould deduct the entire essence of marriage from the bare moral notion of love:"If a woman surrenders to a man out of love, the necessary result in amoral sense will be a marriage... The mere concept of love implies that of marriagein the sense indicated" [W.W. IV, 330: 'Ergibt sich das Weib aus Liebeeinem Manne, so entsteht dadurch moralisch notwendig eine Ehe... Im bloszenBegriff der Liebe ist der der Ehe, in der soeben angegebenen Bedeutungenthalten'.] This not only means ignoring the entire external civil juridical aspect of the marriage-bond, butessentially also its internaljuridical side. In his "Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts" HEGEL tried to remove this error byconsidering a juridical-moral kind of love as the essence of marriage. Thus the"transitory, capricious and merely subjective" nature inherent inlove as "Empfindung" (="sensation") should give way to an ideal restriction [W.W. VIII (Berlin 1833),116, 223.]

HEGEL must be credited with again emphasizing the normativedetermination of married love, not only in opposition to therationalistic-Humanistic conception, which was chieflynaturalistic-psychologistic, but also in contrast with the Romantic ideal offree love.

However, he no more grasped the internal structural principle of themarriage union than did those thinkers whose conception he tried to correct.His view of this bond remains dialectical-functionalistic, misinterpreting thesupra-modal character of its structural law founded in the plastic horizon ofour experience.

The reaction in Roman Catholic circles in favour ofthe recognition of the "primacy of love". The "newtendency" and the encyclical "Casti connubii" (1930).

In Roman Catholic circles the earlier scholastic conception of marriagehas never been explicitly abandoned. It is, however, highly interesting to findthat here, too, an at least implicit reaction has set in which starts from the primacyof love in this community. At the same timeit sharply opposes the misinterpretation of married love as a transientsensual-erotic inclination.

This "new tendency", whose most gifted representative isDIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND is important also because it runs counter to the olderuniversalistic trends. It emphasizes the absolutely peculiar internal characterof the marriage bond as the constant love-union between husband and wife.

In his Die Ehe (published in1929) HILDEBRAND writes as follows: 'Love is the primary meaningof marriage according to the creation, just as its primary purpose according to the creation is to produce new human beings. When compared withthis primary meaning its function for human society, and certainly itsimportance for the State, is entirely subordinate. This will becomeparticularly clear to us if we call to mind the peculiar nature of marriedlove...'. [D. von HILDEBRAND, Die Ehe (München, 1929), p. 7: 'Die Liebe ist der primäre Schopfungssinn derEhe, wie die Entstehung neuer Menschen ihr primärer Schöpfungszweck. IhreFunktion für die menschliche Gesellschaft, gar nicht zu reden von ihrerBedeutung für den Staat, sind demgegenüber ganz untergeordnet. Dies wird unsinsbesondere deutlich werden, wenn wir uns die Eigenart der ehelichen Liebe insBewusztsein rufen...'.]

I do not overlook the fact that HILDEBRAND's view of the essence ofmarried love as an I-thou-union, (as such far superior to a mere"We-ommunity as the State or the nation) betrays a strong influence ofmodern personalist and existentialistic tendencies in immanence-philosophy.

On the other hand, from a radical-Christian standpoint, we must raiseserious objections to many essential parts of his views.

Let me mention only some critical points. HILDEBRAND hypostatizes themasculine and the feminine principle in creation to a metaphysical differenceof essence. This leads him to detaching the inner meaning-structure of marriedlove from its temporal biotic foundation in the organic difference between thesexes. This is a metaphysical speculation, which, of course, does not becomemore acceptible by a typically Roman-Catholic concentration of the metaphysicalfeminine principle in the Holy Virgin. His conception that the individualpersons in marriage have been interwoven by the conjugal bond into an actual"I-thou" union is essentially dependent on BUBER's personalism. Itresults in the view that this union transcends all other temporal societal relationships since it implies a centralcontact between husband and wife, a real meeting in the central sphere of existence. This means an absolutization of themarriage bond which in my opinion is incompatible with the Biblical standpoint.

We have had to reject the Thomistic teleological-metaphysical axiology,but we can no more accept its modern irrationalistic-romanizing modification inHILDEBRAND's thesis: 'A community ranks higher in proportion to the good whichdetermines the scope of its meaning, or closely connected with this, inproportion to the depth of its point of unity in the human personality, and tothe extent to which love plays an essential part in it, and finally inproportion to the directness with which the unifying principle is concernedwith our supra-natural destination'. There is also the specifically RomanCatholic distinction between marriage as a "natural union" and as a"sacrament of grace" which is unacceptable from the ReformatoryChristian standpoint.

But in spite of all these serious objections it may be gratefullyacknowledged that on many points the writer voices the Biblical-Christianconception of the conjugal bond as a typical and incomparable institutionallove-union between husband and wife, as the expression of the eternal love ofChrist towards the Church as His Bride.

In this respect he implicitly contradicts the traditional scholastictheory. This attitude also enables him to oppose the subjectivistic romanticview of married love with its revolutionary consequences.

HILDEBRAND lays due emphasis on the fact that the tendency to beindissoluble as long as life lasts isnaturally implied in the very meaning of marriage as the closest love-union[Op, cit. p. 36: 'Welche Oberflächlichkeit nicht zu verstehen, dass die Tendenzauf Unauflöslichkeit aus dem Sinn der Ehe als engster Liebesgemeinschaft vonselbst hervorgeht, sondern sie aus Nützlichkeitsgründen ableiten zu wollen'.'How superficial to infer this tendency of marriage towards indissolubilityfrom utility-grounds and not to understand that it is a consequence of themeaning of marriage as the closest love-union.']
The traditional scholastictheory had lost sight of this, through seeking the only guarantee for theinstitutional character of this bond in the legal sphere, HILDEBRAND has alsosharply realized that the "institution" as such retains its characteras a law.

Real married love indeed postulates a union for life in which the temporal existences of the partners areinterwoven into the closest possible temporal unity, which is not possiblewithout conjugal fidelity.

In virtue of the divine world-order this love necessarily appeals to aninternal juridical relation. But the latter is placed under the leading of loveand not vice versa. If this love islacking, the internal conjugal union is really absent. In the second volume wehave shown in detail the modal difference and inter-modal meaning-coherencebetween the sexual eros, as abiotic drive and psychical feeling [see also], and the moral agapè, as normative married love. Of course it is thelatter which is meant by the apostle Paul when he stresses the duty of themarriage-partners to love each other [Cf. Ephesians 5: 25-33]. In fact this wasnot denied by the older Roman Catholic moral philosophers [Cf. CATHREIN, Moralphilosophie II (6e Aufl. 1924), p. 428.] But under the influenceof the Aristotelian psychology, love was here primarily conceived of as anaffect of pleasure in a corresponding good, originating in a sensory knowledgeof this good, which rouses the sensual appetitive power.

"Spiritual love" — subject to norms — was held to derive from"spiritual knowledge" through the effect of reason (noūs) on the appetitive faculty. This resulted in anelimination of the modal sphere-sovereignty of love, as the nuclear meaning ofmorality. Love was levelled down to a general analogical concept comprehendingevery natural appetitive tendency to realize a good [Cf. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, 2 ae, q, 26-28. In its widest sense THOMAS defines love as:'aliquid ad appetitum pertinens, cum utriusqueobjectum sit bonum' (q. 26 art. 1). Thisdefinition explicitly comprises even the natural "appetite" (taken inthe Aristotelian sense) of a heavy object "ad locum medium", as "amornaturalis"!] THOMAS' conception of "spiritual" love was no moremodally defined in its meaning than his view of sexual eros and his concept of the good.

In opposition to this, the modern trend has maintained the specificmeaning of love in contradistinction to sensual passion.

In a short time the new tendency gained ground in Roman Catholiccircles, so that, to a certain extent at least, it found official recognitionin the well-known encyclical Casti Connubii, issued by Pope Pius XI on the 31st of December1930. This encyclical frankly assigned "primacy of honour"(principatusnobilitatis) to married love in a Christianmarriage. All this was in striking contrast with what happened in Protestantcircles two years later, when the moral theologian EMIL BRUNNER, publishedhis book Das Gebot and die Ordnungen, inwhich love, if viewed as the basis of marriage, was called a "sandyground" and marital love was identified with erotic inclination!

The internal deepening of the marriage bond by the formationof a family.

After having gained a sufficient insight into the inner structure of themarriage-bond we shall now try to deepen our insight into its inner coherencewith the family. According to the

divine order of creation, marriage is intentionally adapted tothe family relationship. In the light of our previous explanation this meansthat marriage is enriched and deepened by its natural interweaving with thefamily relationship, and conjugal love is deepened and enriched in parentallove. How is this to be understood?

We have rejected the opinion that in conjugal and family relationshipsthe central I-nessof human personality is inter-woven with that of the other members of thesecommunities, and is only thereby formed and deepened.

The central religious interweaving of the human egos is independent oftemporal bonds, although the converse is not true. There is no doubt that theselfhoods of the conjugal partners are for all eternity interwoven in the newroot of life, Christ Jesus, if they are really united in Him. This is thereligious fulness of meaning of marriage. But in this religious inter-wovennessChristian marriage partners become aware of belonging to one another, not ashusband and wife in the temporal marriage bond [Cf. Matth. 22: 30; Mark. 12:25.], but as children of one Father in Christ Jesus. Here on earth they mayonly belong to each other "as though they did not" [2 Cf. 1 Corinth 7: 29-31]. For temporal ties, even the most intense in this life, areperishable; the invisible union with Christ is eternal.

But this religious union should find its typical expression in thetemporal bond of the marriage-partners.

When the marriage bond has expanded into a family relationship theformer is enriched and deepened in its meaning by its close interweaving withthe latter, because its bi-unity in conjugal love has produced a unity inplurality.

In the conjugal union, as such, the expression of the personality in thetemporal existence of each of the married persons is enriched, enlarged andcompleted by that of the other. A woman becomes "wife" in the fullsense of the word only in the conjugal union with her husband, and vice versa.And the expression of the personality in the bi-unitary bond assumes a widerand deeper perspective in the multi-unitary bond of the family.

Yet it is not possible to deduce the essential internal structure of themarriage-bond from the "cosmic purpose of propagation", as was doneby THOMAS AQUINAS. This traditional universalistic construction, amplydiscussed above, necessarily results in an eradication of the boundaries between the marriage union and thefamily relationship. This is evident from THOMAS' statement that posterity isessential to the marital bond ["Constat quod proles est essentialissimumin matrimonio" (4 Sent. dist. 31,q. I, a. 3, c).]. Such a construction must naturally restrict itself to adeduction of the general institution of marriage from the purpose ofprocreation. For it cannot be denied that individual marriages that remainchildless still retain their character as conjugal bonds. But the structurallaw and the subjective marital bond subjected to it can never be separated fromeach other, so that in its application to the factual relationships THOMAS'view leads to constructions of a very artificial and internally contradictorycharacter. We need only mention his explanations of the relation between theindividual act of sexual uniting and the "objective procreative purpose". THOMAS concedes that sexual intercourse in abarren marriage, or in general such which is not carried on with a concreteprocreative intention, is morally permissible. But then it will not do to seekthe inner essence of the conjugal institution in the aim of propagation [THOMASAQUINAS conceives the procreative purpose only as the essential purpose ofmarriage in an "objective" institutional sense].

Then the internal structure of the marriage bond, in its difference fromthe family relationship, irresistibly forces itself upon us.

The fundamental difference between animal mating and the human maritalbond is that the former does not occur within a communal relationship which inits inner nature is independent of propagation. As soon as the animal offspringis no longer in need of the parental care, or the mating lacks a procreativeeffect, the couple separates.

The marriage bond on thecontrary, normally embraces husband and wife for life, independent of thenatural procreative end.

No "rational procreative purpose" can justify the sexualconsummation of marriage in an ethical sense, but only married love sanctifiedin Christ. This love (and not a utilitarian kind of thought) is the trueregulator and educator of married sexual life towards temperance and chastity.

In the divine order of creation, marriage is the only ordered way to form a family; marriage and family are mutuallyadapted to each other. But they retain their own peculiar internal structureand value. If this is ignored or misinterpreted, our marital morality willresult in a labyrinth of contradictions of our own creating, and the lucidsimplicity of the divine ordinance will be obscured [This word "ordinance" is taken in the Biblical sense,cf. Psalm 119 : 91, of the Authorized (King James) Version].

...The "manus mariti" ["hand (authority) of husband" - FMF] in its autocratic semi-political, semi-proprietary structure, inwhich the husband even had a jus vitae ac necis [right of life and death - FMF] assigned to him with respect to his wife, cannot be inferred from the internal structural principle of themarriage bond. This authority was only connected with natural marriage in an externalenkapsis [ie "structural inter-weaving" - FMF].The internal structure of marital authority can only be understood from thetypical love-union between the conjugal partners in which, according to thedivine order of creation, the husband is "the head of the wife". Hehas to lead her, but by no means to dominate her, because the female part inthe bi-unitary bond is perfectly equivalent (though not equal) to the maleelement and ought to be fully recognized as such. The authoritative relation inits normative internal structure does not in any way detract from the intensityand closeness of the love-relations between husband and wife. On the contrary,marital authority plays an essential role in them [Cf. Ephesians V, where SaintPaul strongly emphasizes this role of marital authority in the love relationship.].

Marital authority and the normal emotional aspect ofmatrimony. Can psychology speak of "normal"? Cultural influences onfemale emotional life.

It cannot be denied that normal female emotional life in the maritalbond wants to find support and guidance in the husband, and is disappointed ifthey are lacking. Also in a man's normal affective life the instinctive impulseto support and lead corresponds to these female needs.

On a functionalistic standpoint the question may of course be asked:what is a normal male and female life of feeling? Then the deviations from whatwe have explained above are treated as phenomena of perfectly the same value asthose corresponding to this standard.

But then it should be remembered that it is no longer possible to speakof the structure of male and female feeling; for these structures in the psychical [ie'feeling' - FMF] aspect of human existence cannot be approached apart from thenormative structural functions. They are included in the act-structure of ahuman body though, in a restrictive or closed sense, they also function in itslower animal structure qualified by instinctive psychical [ie sensory] impulses. No doubtthere occur female feelings in men, and male feelings in women. But this cannotbe established without a standard for male and female feeling. If we eliminatethe coherence between the psychical [ie 'feeling' -FMF] and the later normativestructural functions, all the human individuality structures in thefeeling-modus are levelled out. Then we are only left with the modal-functionalcoherence between the most heterogeneous psychic ["sensory"] phenomena.

It is no doubt correct to say that in the transcendental directionfeeling in man and woman is indissolubly bound up with its historical formationin the different cultural periods. A number of psychical differences betweenthe sexes depend on the cultural influences of many successive generations.Modern psychology has rightly set these facts in the light. But this stateof affairs is exactly an indication of the indissoluble coherence between the psychic[nothing whatsoever to do with 'occult'! -FMF] function of feeling and the normative structural functions inhuman existence. These facts can never beargued against the constancy of the internal-structural principle in theemotional relations between husband and wife. For this principle is alreadypre-supposed in the historical formation of male and female feeling in marriage.

Cultural education cannot change the male structure into a female one,nor the other way round. Only a fundamental encroachment upon the bioticstructure of the human body would be able to accomplish such a structuralalteration because sex difference has a typical biotic foundation. As long aspsychology continues to speak of a male and a female feeling-structure, it willbe in need of a normative structural principle which itself is independent ofthe concrete historical development.

To point out effeminacy in a man's emotional life, implies a normativestructural principle lying at the foundation of this statement.

The structural authoritative moment in the internaljuridical, aesthetic, and social exchange functions of the conjugal bond.

The structure of authority in the marital community also has itsinternal juridical aspect. Even in the best of marital relationships there mayoccur a difference of opinion about certain matters. Yet the partners will haveto come to a decision if their union is to remain intact. According to the internalstructural principle, the juridical competence to make a decision belongs tothe husband as the head of the conjugal bond.

But the very structure of marital authority does not permit itsautocratic exercise. Marriage is a bi-unitary community under the typicalleading of conjugal love; it is not a "State in miniature". That iswhy political forms of government such as monarchy and democracy cannot betransplanted in the internal domain of matrimony. A wife ought to beco-responsible for such decisions. In internal domestic affairs she isentrusted with the daily management of the household, and not her husband. Butalso outside of the narrow circle of household affairs the internal structureof the marriage bond requires a loving consultation between the marriagepartners with full respect for the internal competence and responsibility ofthe husband as the "head".

Civil law, though fundamentally different in character from the internalmatrimonial law, should, nevertheless, respect this internal structure ofmarital authority insofar as the latter also functions "enkaptically"in the civil juridical relations.

From this point of view it is not recommendable, in case a marriedcouple differ in opinion, to give the civil judge an unrestricted competence todecide.

In this way, the civil legislator would elevate the internal disturbanceof the matrimonial union to a civil juridical rule. Even from a pedagogical point of view this is adangerous attitude. Of course, when the internal bi-unitary bond in marriagehas been subjectively realized, be it in an imperfect and sinful way, theintroduction of the civil judge as the supreme power of decision above themarriage partners will not have any practical sense. But this bond may bedisturbed to such a degree that with regard to internal marital affairs themarriage partners are opposed to each other as parties in a civil law-suit.Only in such cases may the view arise that an impartial judge must be entrustedwith the decision. The question in how far a task is to be ascribed to thecivil judge in this situation will be discussed in a later context. We shallthen try to find the internal boundaries set to civil law in the enkapticstructural interlacements within the juridical law-sphere.

The internal structure of marital authority is also expressed inthe aesthetical law-sphere. The original matrimonial harmony presupposes thecomplete concord of the male and female elements in the conjugal relations, inaccordance with their own structural character. The wife should not play thetypical leading part of the husband. If she does take the lead in a generalsense, the situation seems aesthetically wrong to us. The consideration that perhaps the husband is a weakling and thatthis fact necessitated the wife to take the lead, cannot obviate our impressionof disharmony.

The structure of authority also expresses itself in the social and inthe lingual [ie 'symbolic' - FMF] aspect. The positive, historically foundedsocial and symbolic forms of association between husband and wife differ, ofcourse, according to place and time. The forms used at the time of thepatriarch Abraham cannot do duty in our days. The utterance of St. Peter aboutthis question in his first epistle does not mean to contradict this state ofaffairs [1 Peter 3:6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. ESV]. But the structural principleof marriage, which is not dependent on the historical development, should findexpression also in the internal social and symbolic relations. These relationsought to be very tender and close, but the leading position of the husbandshould constantly be given expression in them, which is something differentfrom the required mutual respect for each other's person. As soon as in the internalmarital union the social [aspectual - FMF] and the symbolic [aspectual - FMF]respect for the husband as the headof the community has been lost, we are confronted with a subjectiveinfringement of the internal vital law of marriage.

The original biotic foundation of marital authority, whichcannot be interpreted as its ground of justification.

In the last instance marital authority has its typical foundation in theaspect in which marriage itself is originally founded, viz. the biotic sphere. Theleading role of the husband in sexual intercourse, and the passive receptivepart of the wife form the original basis of the meaning-individuality ofmarital authority in the retrocipatory direction of cosmic time. In the MiddleAges this functional-biotic basis of marital authority was misconceived in manyrespects. This was due to the influence of primitive biological notions derivedfrom ARISTOTLE about the genesis of the female offspring in consequence of adeficiency in the natural process. Nature was supposed to show an androcratictendency in the procreative process. As a consequence the wife was thought tobe essentially imperfect and by nature subjected to the husband. For thisreason THOMAS AQUINAS calls woman "mas occasionatus" according to her genesis, which is in perfectagreement with ARISTOTLE'S views. As a marriage partner she was supposed to beonly "aliquid viri" andnot "civis simpliciter".Apart from these Aristotelian and medieval misconceptions, it stands to reasonthat in the light of our cosmonomic Idea the "justification" of marital authority cannot be found in its originalbiotic foundation as such. Marital authority has no other justification thanthe divine ordinance revealed in the normative structural principle of thiscommunity as a whole. On the Christian standpoint there can be no question of a"rational justification" in the Platonic and Aristotelian sense, orin that of the Humanistic theory of natural law.

The divine order of creation is not grounded in "reason", butinversely human "reason" is grounded in the divine order. Theoretic"reason" can only try to trace the structural principles that God hasordained for human society in His temporal world-order and which alone enableus to experience the factual societal relationships in their different inner nature.Apart from the structural principle of the marital bond, philosophy will seekin vain for a tenable justification of the husband's authority in its typicalcharacter.

The structural principle should also be the hypothesis of ethnological researches after maritalrelations. The interpretation of the facts in accordance with theirmeaning-structure and the positivistic attitude in science.

This structure cannot be ignored with impunity neither in practical sociallife nor in social science and philosophy.

Ethnological research after the internal marital conditions in differentprimitive societies should also be based on this structure as its hypothesis. Then we shall avoid the error of confounding the genuinemarital relations with societal relationships of an entirely differentstructure and we shall no longer run the risk of repeatedly misinterpreting thefacts.

At this point the supposedly neutral positivistic conception of sciencewill accuse our standpoint of intruding "metaphysically foundedevaluations" into the investigations of the "facts". At a deeperlevel this fundamental contrast hides a basically different view ofexperiential reality. "Facts" can only be conceived in their structuralmeaning. If the attempt is made to examinethe facts of societal relations apart from their normative structuralprinciples on account of a naturalistic or positivistic historicist prejudice,the result will be a falsification of the data.

Ethnological research after conjugal and family relations is concernedwith subjective phenomena within realized supra-arbitrary institutions, whichcannot be understood apart from their internal structural principle. Neitherthe contradictory notion of merely arbitrary ("empirical") norms, northat of constructive "ideal types" as applied by MAX WEBER, canreplace the genuine structural principles of matrimonial and familyrelationships. The nominalistic prejudice in positivistic science inevitablyleads to a complete eradication of the fundamental boundaries between thevarious structures of human society.

The misinterpretation of the so-called matriarchal phenomenain the older evolutionist ethnology.

The older naturalistic evolutionist tendency made the most consistentattempt to eliminate the structural principles of marriage and family as the hypothesis of ethnological research. But it was exactly thistrend which indulged in the most phantastic interpretations of the facts. Itsevolutionistic construction of the development of marriage and family life waspresently popularized by the social democratic theorists ENGELS and BEBEL. Itwas

founded on a complete misunderstanding of the so-called matriarchalphenomena.

This misconception had been introduced into ethnology by LEWIS H.MORGAN, who was strongly influenced by the Swiss law-historian J. J. BACHOFEN,though the latter was a romantic thinker rather than a Darwinian evolutionist.MORGAN's evolutionistic theory has by now been generally rejected as unscientific.But we may establish that he would never have construed such erroneousconceptions from a defective material of ethnological facts, if he had notfirst purposely eliminated the basic structural principles of marriage andfamily.

The theory of matriarchy was propounded by BACHOFEN in his famous work Das Mullerrecht, eine Untersuchung über dieGynäkokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur(Stuttgart, 1861). He tried to prove that human sexual intercourse had startedwith an initial stage of absolute promiscuity. For this thesis he adduced the"matriarchal phenomena", already found among various peoples ofantiquity (e.g., the Lycians). These peoples computed kinship, and often theright of inheritance, from the mother and not from the father. BACHOFENexplained this by assuming that originally sexual relations were so irregularthat the family was formed with the mother for its centre and not with theunknown father.

From such conditions original matriarchy or gynarchy developed since theinvention of agriculture, which must be ascribed to women, so that the originalfamily was not patriarchal but matriarchal. Patriarchy was the next stage inthe development of human family life.

BACHOFEN set forth this view in the mythological symbolic forms of lateRomanticism. His theory was completely rationalized and systematicallyelaborated in a Darwinist sense by the American ethnologist LEWIS MORGAN.

According to the latter the human family passed through the followingstages of development: 1) unlimited' promiscuity of sexual intercourse; 2) thekinship family (in which only sexual intercourse between ascendants anddescendants is prohibited); 3) the "punalua family" (sexualintercourse is forbidden between brothers and sisters as well; the women of onehalf of the tribe are accessible to the men of the other and vice versa;group-marriage); 4) matriarchal "syndasmic" family (the initial stageof individual marriages, polygamy, uncertainty about the father); 5) patriarchy,a polygamous family; 6) a monogamous individual marriage.

This constructive evolutionist theory (criticized already in its palmydays by distinguished ethnologists like C. N. STARKE, E. WESTERMARCK and E.GROSSE) has been completely refuted by the ethnological researches of Father W.SCHMIDT R. J. SWANTON, X. R. H. LOWIE and others, so that it can no longer betaken seriously.

In his book Die Stellung der Pygmäenvölker lin derEntwicklungsgeschichte der Menschheil (Stuttgart, 1910), which should be consulted with acritical mind, SCHMIDT shows that with the pygmean peoples monogamous marriageis predominant. This is all the more important as the pygmies are among thecomparatively oldest extant representatives of the human race. This fact has atany rate been established, however much opinions may differ with regard to the"problem of the pygmies". As for North-America, the territory whichwas supposed chiefly to supply the material for MORGAN's theory, R. J. SWANTONshowed the absolute untenability of the matriarchy and promiscuity theory asearly as the year 1905 [The Social Organisation of American Tribes in American Anthropologist, N.S. VII, 663-673]. And the well-known Americanethnologist R. H. LOWIE in his book Primitive Society explicitly states: 'Sexual communism (after themanner of the "group-marriage") as a condition replacing individualmarriage, is nowhere to be found at present. And the evidence of its earlieroccurrence must be rejected as insufficient' [R. H. LOWIE, PrimitiveSociety (1st ed. New York 1920; 2nd ed.1929, pp. 58-59)].

With reference to the bilateral family the same author remarks: 'In aword, the bilateral family (i.e. the family consisting of husband and wife andtheir children) is an absolutely universal unit of human societal life'.

It was particularly the introduction of the"culture-historical" method in genetic ethnological research whichcaused the complete defeat of the older constructive evolutionist theory. Forit put an end to the arbitrary grouping of facts and their interpretationaccording to an a priori evolutionistscheme.

The "Kulturkreislehre" [I.e. the doctrine of "culturalcircles"] and the normative evaluations of married and family life amongprimitive peoples.

The culture-historical trend in modern ethnology is represented by twoschools, viz. the so-called "Kulturkreislehre" and the so-called critical school of the Americanscholar FRANZ BOAS.

....

It is an undoubted fact that the introduction of a culturalscientific method in ethnology has meant a great gain. Once for all the ideahas been given up that "primitive" peoples ("Naturvölker")have no history at all. It is also a gainthat this method broke with the constructive evolutionist manner of thought.Quite a different point is the question as to whether different adherents ofthe "Kulturkreislehre"have sufficiently freed themselves from this evolutionism, and if especiallythe economic factors are not too much treated as if they influenced societal relations in a natural-causal way. Inthis connection the very just remarks of the North-American ethnologist R. H.LOWIE in his book Primitive Society withrespect to such economic explanations are worth listening to.

Our objections raised against the "Kulturkreislehre" chiefly referred to the eradication of theboundaries between ethnology and history proper. But we want especially toemphasize the great merits of various adherents of this view (W. SCHMIDT,KOPPERS, and others) in their researches after the marriage, family and kinshiprelations among primitive peoples. These Roman-Catholic scholars seriouslytried to base their investigations on the structural principle of thesecommunities as given in the order of the creation. It is true that theircharacterization of these relationships as "Sympathieverbände" (bonds of sympathy) is still too vague.Perhaps as a consequence of the influence of the traditional scholastic viewthey approach the internal marriage and family relations among primitive races still too much from their external popularjuridical regulations. Nevertheless, these authors have penetrated to theinsight that, according to their internal structure, these relationships cannotbe conceived apart from their normative structural law but must be qualified astypical love-bonds. And this again and again causes them involuntarily todistinguish between the external and the internal functions of thesecommunities. For a correct interpretation of the facts this is methodologicallyvery important.

As SCHMIDT and KOPPERS maintain the supra-arbitrary structuralprinciples of marriage and family relations, they also point to the fatalinfluence of some external forms within which these relations have to berealized among the different primitive peoples of the so-called primary andsecondary cultures. These influences are fatal to the internal solidarity,purity and intimacy of these communal bonds. Of course, from the"anti-axiological" point of view in ethnology this is only anobjectionable confusion of science and a world-and life-view.

The truth is, however, that the supposedly unbiased scientific viewstarts from a nominalistic ["denial of universals" - FMF] apriori, viz. that the subjective humansocietal relations can be grasped apart from their supra-arbitrary structuresof individuality.

Even on the biological natural scientific standpoint it is unavoidableto state that certain external environmental factors are destructive to aliving organism. How then should it be contrary to the scientific standpointwhen the Christian ethnologist establishes that certain external factors (oftenof a typical historical foundation and economic qualification), like matriarchyand polyandry, have a disturbing influence upon the internal marital and familyrelations? Could the reason be that such axiological statements presuppose thehandling of normative structural principles in ethnological research, whichshould be eliminated in order to conceive the social facts in an unbiased way?But we have seen that apart from these normative structural principles thefacts do not reveal their true societal meaning.

The total elimination of these principles which only enable us to speakof marriage and family in a univocal scientific sense, makes any exactethnological investigation of the factual marital and family relationsimpossible. The nominalistic ["denial of universals" - FMF] prejudice which lies at the foundation of this elimination is not warranted by science, andis bound to result in a continual misinterpretation of the facts.

.....

(p 345) In its normative meaning-structure the family bondpoints above time to the religious community of mankind in Christ. In Him allreborn human beings find the religious fulfilment of their temporal kinshipties as members of the human race on the basis of palingenesis ["rebirth", "regeneration", "re-creation" - FMF] [Cf. Mark. 3 : 34, 35. - And looking aboutat those who sat around him, hesaid, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will ofGod, he is my brother and sister and mother" (ESV)].

(Abridged extract from "A New Critique of TheoreticalThought" by Herman Dooyeweerd, Vol.III, pp 266-345)

ADDENDUM:
Extract from:
Center and Periphery: The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a changing world by Herman Dooyeweerd (1964 lecture)(Translated by Dr. J. Glenn Friesen)

    And now the question of sociology as a science in a narrower sense, thus as a non-philosophical science, well yes, there we have this unhappy fact that the traditional view of sociology is that sociology exclusively investigates our factual societal relationships, in order to explain them in a causal way, leaving the normative views of these matters outside the field of sociology. They then say that these norms belong to legal science, or to ethical theory, and so forth. Now I have tried to show that this view is in conflict with social reality – that such a reality does not exist. The whole social reality as such, what we call social facts, can only be ascertained by the application of norms and lines of responsibility. For example, if I say that there is a marriage between A and B, then I undoubtedly have a social relationship in view, which also has its juridical aspect. But it is a real social relationship. It is a social fact that this is a marriage. But I cannot establish that fact without the application of norms. How else would I be able to distinguish marriage from concubinage or from a relationship of free love? And so on. If I say that someone is a minister, then without a doubt I am relating a social fact. But can I establish that without applying a norm? Being a minister presupposes qualifications, it presupposes an office. Yes, these are all things that I can only establish by applying norms.
    In other words, this is the dilemma for sociology: is it a true science in the sense of wetenschap or is it ‘science’ in the English sense? [wetenschap [nf] 1.(cognition, knowledge, noesis) the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning. 2. (science, scientific_knowledge) knowledge accumulated by systematic study and organized by general principles. 3. (skill, science) ability to produce solutions in some problem domain. 4. (science, scientific_discipline) a particular branch of scientific knowledge. (Lookwayup)] Americans are presently much broader in their understanding of ‘science,’ for they understand it to also mean normative science. But the English have not yet come that far, for they sharply distinguish between science and the arts. And they say, "okay, legal science as a normative science, and ethics, the ethical science–those are arts but not science, for science concerns reality as it really is, the facts. And the arts, they can of course say how things ought to be. That’s the way these two areas are, and they should be that way; they should not be mixed up with each other". All right, but then I must state that it cannot all be reduced to social reality. For if from out of social reality, we try to abstract social norms in the broadest sense of the word from out of social reality, then we do not retain any single social fact. And here, where sociology concerns itself as a non-philosophical science, and concerns itself with facts – here is now a point where from a Christian standpoint, I believe we are forced to also make our Christian voice heard. And in my view what we must say is this, that this whole dualism of what is and what ought to be [sein en sollen], which ever since Immanuel Kant has established itself as a kind of dogma, that this can be shown to derive from a dualistic religious Ground-motive. The humanistic Ground-motive is what I have sketched out as a motive of nature and freedom. On the one hand, there is the motive to control nature by means of scientific causal thought, and on the other hand there is the area of morals, ethics in a broader sense and the area of belief, as the domain of the autonomous freedom of the human personality. These two domains were separated from each other and now it is put forward as a scientific axiom that there are sciences and there are the arts, fine arts [kunst] therefore, and skills [kunstvaardigen]. They say that fine arts have to do with practical things and therefore also with norms, but that the sciences have to do exclusively with how things are [met het zo zijn], with facts and not with norms. And now the Christian voice must be heard, the Christian answer in my opinion. But that cannot be reduced to social reality.
     ... And now with respect to "help", which you of course have discussed in your dissertation [Dooyeweerd is answering a post-lecture question from a Mr. van de Berg], and which you now want to view as an aspect, I don’t believe that that is possible, for "help" has various aspects. Think first of all of the moral aspect, that of the temporal relationships of love, relations of love between people with the requirement of universal love of neighbour, and then of love practiced in a narrower sphere, etc. For there are various typical relations of love. We know about spousal love between man and wife, we know of paternal and maternal love, the love of elders with respect to their children. We know about common love for one’s country, which binds us together. We also know the love towards those of the same faith, at least we ought to know about it. Yes, we find ourselves in an area where again and again, we find ourselves coming into contact with analogies. For in the temporal horizon of experience there is in fact one aspect in which love has an original aspect, and that is the moral aspect. I have thought about this a lot, and analyzed it a lot. I have not yet ever been able to discover another meaning-kernel for the moral aspect than that of love in its temporal relation.
(1964 Lecture: "Centre and Periphery" pp 38-41)(Translated by Dr J. Glenn Friesen)

Jean-Marc Berthoud: CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)

2011-11-16T14:40:00.001Z

Jean-Marc Berthoud

CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)
par Jean-Marc BERTHOUD

Statue de Charles Darwin

     Charles Darwin est une figure historique moderne très importante. Il est capital qu’on en parle et qu’on le fasse bien connaître, ceci surtout pour deux raisons:
– Son œuvre est un moment important dans la vague de fond qui, venant de l’héritage de la Renaissance du paganisme du XVIe siècle et des fausses Lumières de l’antichristianisme du XVIII, a submergé à la fin du XIX siècle ce qui restait de la culture chrétienne en Europe. C’est un véritable tsunami spirituel qui a libéré notre ancienne civilisation de l’influence du christianisme traditionnel et livré le monde entier au matérialisme athée.
– C’est aussi un moment important dans l’histoire des sciences constituant une intrusion massive d’éléments idéologiques dans le fonctionnement des sciences expérimentales.

     Le créationnisme est une double réaction contre ce phénomène. Ce mot «créationnisme» est devenu, comme d’autres vocables («fondamentalisme», «antisémitisme», «fascisme», «communisme», «intégrisme» ou, par le passé, «papiste» ou «calviniste»), un mot utilisé pour disqualifier un adversaire sans avoir à accomplir la tâche pénible de le réfuter. Maintenant, dans ce débat apparemment scientifique, mais aux résonances religieuses, les mots «évolutionniste» et «créationniste» sont comme deux armes qu’on se jette à la figure! Car, en fait, cette dispute a des fondements dans deux visions religieuses différentes du monde. Il s’agit du combat du matérialisme évolutionniste athée contre le spiritualisme créationniste chrétien (et aussi juif et islamique). Il a même à présent des relents politiques, vu les interventions récentes assez musclées du Conseil de l’Europe et du Parlement européen en faveur d’un évolutionnisme manifestement à court d’arguments rationnels et scientifiques. En quelque sorte, le bras séculier vient au secours de la nouvelle Eglise en difficulté face à l’hérésie créationniste «antiscientifique».

     Il nous faut constater une double réaction au phénomène, disons-le, darwiniste.

     La première est celle d’une défense de l’enseignement biblique traditionnel sur l’origine de toutes choses. Cette défense n’est pas uniquement le fait des chrétiens traditionnels. Nous trouvons aussi à leurs côtés des juifs et des musulmans pour lesquels le récit des origines contenu dans les premiers chapitres de la Genèse a toujours une importance capitale. C’est ce que l’on peut appeler la réaction religieuse au phénomène darwiniste.

     L’autre réaction est scientifique. Beaucoup de savants (et non des moindres) se sont vivement opposés à l’intrusion d’éléments à proprement parler idéologiques dans le fonctionnement des sciences expérimentales telles que les concevait un Claude Bernard par exemple. En France, depuis l’époque de Darwin surtout, ils furent assez nombreux. Pensons à des figures comme celles du célèbre savant neuchâtelois expatrié aux Etats-Unis, Louis Agassiz, à l’entomologiste J.-H. Fabre, au médecin Louis Vialleton, au biologiste Louis Bonoure, au zoologiste Pierre-Paul Grassé, à l’ingénieur Guy Berthault, au médecin Jérôme Lejeune et j’en passe, auteurs dont les compétences scientifiques furent très largement reconnues par leurs confrères.

     La plupart de ces savants français ont vécu avant l’apparition de ce qu’on connaît aujourd’hui sous l’appellation de «mouvement créationniste». Ce phénomène est venu au monde aux Etats-Unis et a été suscité tout particulièrement par la publication, par deux auteurs protestants, John Whitcomb (un pasteur) et Henry Morris (un ingénieur), d’un ouvrage célèbre dans ces milieux, Le déluge de la Genèse (The Genesis Flood), publié en 1961 à Philadelphie par une maison d’édition calviniste des plus respectables, Presbyterian and Reformed. L’influence de ce mouvement créationniste se répand aujourd’hui progressivement à travers le monde entier.

     La Société créationniste scientifique aux Etats-Unis (Creation Science Society) fut le fruit de l’impact considérable qu’eut cet ouvrage et des labeurs infatigables de son fondateur et premier président, Henry M. Morris. Elle est constituée uniquement de savants chevronnés, dont un grand nombre (des centaines) sont détenteurs de doctorats dans leurs disciplines particulières. Leurs nombreux travaux «créationnistes» peuvent être caractérisés par les deux points suivants:
     – Ils ont, par des travaux scientifiques souvent très pointus, démontré que de nombreuses hypothèses avancées par les savants évolutionnistes se trouvaient en contradiction avec les lois des sciences expérimentales, en particulier de la physique, de la chimie, des sciences biologiques, de la biologie moléculaire, de l’hydraulique, de la statistique mathématique, etc.
     – Certains d’entre eux ont cherché à construire un modèle scientifique créationniste (pour répondre à celui de l’hypothèse évolutionniste), ceci à partir des récits des onze premiers chapitres de la Genèse, lus de manière historique; des premiers principes de l’ordre de l’univers décrits en Genèse 1; des lois de la science expérimentale; et des données de la géologie relatives au déluge, celui-ci étant considéré par eux (par la Bible et par d’innombrables récits légendaires recueillis sur la surface de toute la terre), comme un désastre historique universel. Ce déluge universel, selon ces savants, serait à la source des bancs sédimentaires et des fossiles qu’ils contiennent.

     Pour ce qui concerne le premier point (la critique des erreurs scientifiques de la «science» évolutionniste), ces savants créationnistes ont été rejoints par de nombreux autres savants, ceci souvent en cachette tant est puissant le consensus évolutionniste scientifiquement correct en place, qui ne pouvaient que constater, dans leur propre travail de savants, à quel point certaines hypothèses évolutionnistes ne collaient pas à la réalité des faits mesurables à l’aune de la méthode expérimentale et de l’expérience.

     Je ne prendrai qu’un exemple qui, lui, est devenu public. Il s’agit du biologiste moléculaire australien non créationniste de renommée mondiale, Michael Denton, qui, dans son livre L’évolution, une théorie en crise1, a mis en lumière de nombreuses déficiences dans le modèle scientifique évolutionniste. C’est à cette démarche sainement critique que faisait écho le grand biologiste, de convictions solidement évolutionnistes, Jean Rostand lorsqu’il caractérisait la théorie de l’évolution comme n’étant, en fait, rien d’autre qu’«un conte de fées pour grandes personnes». Denton, de manière moins pittoresque, disait pour sa part que, «l’évolution est le mythe cosmogonique [des origines du monde] du XXe siècle» (p. 369).

     Le second point concerne la construction d’un modèle scientifique créationniste. Certains de ces savants dits créationnistes ont cherché à allier les données historiques qui se trouvent dans les onze premiers chapitres de la Genèse avec toutes sortes de phénomènes scientifiques pour tenter d’expliquer les changements, principalement de taille, des organismes biologiques (des plantes ou des animaux géants, par exemple) dont témoignent les fossiles. Ils considèrent que la catastrophe universelle du déluge aurait eu un effet considérable sur le climat de la planète, rendant impossible la croissance, inhabituelle aujourd’hui, dont témoignent ces fossiles de plantes et d’animaux géants. Pour ces savants, les couches sédimentaires sur la surface de la terre auraient leur origine dans cet immense brassage des eaux provoqué par la catastrophe du déluge tel qu’il est décrit dans la Genèse et dont les couches sédimentaires, et les fossiles qu’elles contiennent, témoignent si clairement. Cette construction hypothétique est sans doute fort intéressante, mais bien moins fondée scientifiquement que ne le sont les critiques ponctuelles que ces mêmes savants émettent, dans leurs disciplines particulières, sur les nombreuses failles qu’ils perçoivent dans le modèle évolutionniste des origines du monde, de la vie et de l’homme.

     Mentionnons ici en passant quelques points soulevés par les critiques de ces savants, créationnistes ou non, contre ce qu’ils perçoivent comme de graves faiblesses dans la construction du modèle général évolutionniste.

– Emile Borel, le célèbre mathématicien français, a cherché à calculer le temps nécessaire à la formation de la plus simple cellule vivante au moyen des seules lois du hasard. Il constata que le nombre d’années nécessaires tendait à l’infini (bien plus que les milliards d’années habituellement évoqués) et était donc impossible à chiffrer concrètement.

     – La sélection naturelle, moteur selon Darwin de l’évolution progressive, ne concerne que ce qu’on appelle la micro-évolution (différenciation telle qu’on la trouve chez les chevaux ou les chiens) et a été depuis longtemps reconnue, par les évolutionnistes eux-mêmes, comme inapte à expliquer le phénomène supposé de l’évolution des formes biologiques. Les savants créationnistes rejettent le fixisme absolu qu’on leur attribue abusivement, acceptant parfaitement les différenciations propres à la micro-évolution.

     – On a fait des centaines de milliers d’expériences sur la mouche à vinaigre pour tenter de susciter sa mutation, mutation que l’on considérait comme apte à produire des changements évolutifs. On n’a, en fait, que réussi à produire des monstres, cependant toujours reconnaissables comme mouches à vinaigre. Si les mutations naturelles, à plus de 90% délétères, nocives, sont le moteur de l’évolution, on aurait alors une évolution non progressive, mais régressive.

     – Si l’évolution est une hypothèse vraie (c’est-à-dire que l’on ne peut pas la prouver fausse – Karl Popper), elle ne se serait pas seulement produite dans un lointain passé invérifiable, mais aujourd’hui même. On n’a cependant jamais observé, ni en laboratoire ni empiriquement, la moindre mutation pouvant produire une nouvelle espèce. Que l’on affirme que l’évolution se serait produite sur des milliards d’années (le temps remplaçant ici la matière comme dieu auto-créateur) ne change rien à l’affaire. La science ne peut se fonder sur des causes invérifiables!

     – Pour qu’une mutation évolutive hypothétique puisse être efficace, il faudrait qu’elle soit identique chez le mâle et la femelle, et ceci au même moment. Autrement la reproduction deviendrait impossible et les traits présumés nouveaux ne sauraient être transmis à la génération suivante. Selon Emile Morel, le calcul des probabilités rend absolument impossible une telle coïncidence de mutations aléatoires (fortuites) identiques au même moment.

     – La colonne géologique prise comme mesure du temps n’est, en fait, qu’une construction arbitraire hypothétique de diverses couches sédimentaires superposées que l’on trouve à différents endroits du globe terrestre et que l’on a tout simplement additionnées. Il faut ajouter que les méthodes de datations modernes, carbone 14, dégradation des éléments radioactifs, etc., se sont avérées (surtout par rapport à de grands âges) être bien moins fiables dans la pratique qu’en laboratoire. Le monde de la nature, ouvert comme il l’est à toutes sortes d’influences extérieures, ne reproduit pas les conditions précises de contrôle que nécessite la méthode expérimentale.

     – Selon la géologie moderne, ce sont les couches sédimentaires qui établissent l’âge des fossiles qu’elles contiennent. Mais, par contre, on affirme en même temps que ce sont les fossiles qui fixent l’âge des couches sédimentaires. Un tel raisonnement circulaire n’a aucune espèce de valeur, tant sur le plan de la logique que de la science.

     – Plus on découvre de fossiles, plus les failles entre les branches de l’arbre de la généalogie évolutionniste des espèces deviennent grandes. C’est-à-dire que, avec la croissance des découvertes de fossiles nouveaux, le nombre des chaînons manquants augmente lui aussi.

     – La biologie moléculaire et la génétique ont découvert l’incroyable complexité et la très forte cohérence des organismes vivants. Une évolution des espèces impliquerait non pas le changement d’un élément de l’organisme (i.e. les nageoires ou les branchies d’un poisson, par exemple), mais la transformation de l’ensemble organique tout entier, car l’être vivant ne saurait survivre à la modification isolée d’une de ses parties essentielles. Le changement d’une espèce en une autre exigerait un miracle constamment répété sur des millions d’années. Le miracle de la création des espèces stables au commencement par Dieu nous semble exiger moins de crédulité que ne le fait le modèle évolutionniste, théiste ou athée.

     – Certains chrétiens font du Dieu Créateur le moteur du phénomène de l’évolution des espèces. C’est ce qu’on appelle l’«évolution théiste» ou le «créationnisme progressif». Nous croyons à un miracle créationnel divin au commencement du monde qui établit l’ordre harmonieux des créatures et les lois de l’univers de manière stable. Ces évolutionnistes théistes multiplient infiniment (et inutilement) les miracles nécessaires à un monde dont l’évolution serait, selon eux, dirigée par Dieu.

     – Les créationnistes reconnaissent parfaitement ce qu’on appelle la micro-évolution, c’est-à-dire les changements à l’intérieur d’une espèce, modifications qui produisent les variétés de chiens ou de chevaux, par exemple. Darwin relève très justement de nombreux changements pareils. Mais il y a un monde entre cette micro-évolution et la macro-évolution que nécessite la théorie de l’évolution.

     – Entre les différents ordres – matière, vie végétale, vie animale et vie humaine – tels que les décrivent et l’observation scientifique depuis Aristote et le premier chapitre de la Genèse, il existe des abîmes de complexification biologique et spirituelle infranchissables sans l’apport d’informations nouvelles prodigieuses. Les lois de la physique et de la chimie sont insuffisantes en elles-mêmes à produire ces formes vivantes nouvelles. Il faut, pour faire naître la vie, un supplément d’informations qui ne se trouve pas dans la matière. Il en va de même pour ce qui concerne l’apparition de ce phénomène tout à fait inédit qu’est l’homme, être à la fois naturel et spirituel. D’où vient alors la vie spirituelle? De la matière? La théorie de l’évolution, malgré des efforts considérables, ne répond jamais à cette question et ne peut y répondre. Il est évident, en toute logique, que du moindre ne saurait sortir le plus, de la matière la vie, de la vie biologique la vie spirituelle. Il faut quelque chose de plus.

     – Les lois de la nature constituée sont autres que celles qui opèrent dans l’acte de la constituer. Connaître le fonctionnement d’un moteur ne nous dit rien sur la manière dont ce moteur est venu à être. On ne peut pas déduire logiquement l’un de l’autre. Il en est de même pour l’univers et son origine. Un ami physicien nucléaire me disait: «Mon travail ne commence qu’avec la constitution définitive des lois régissant la matière. Ce qui serait venu avant ne saurait me concerner. Je n’y ai tout simplement aucun accès.» Le monde tout entier nous parle d’un Créateur, d’un Ordonnateur divin – visible comme à l’œil nu, nous dit la Bible. Seul l’aveuglement des hommes par leur péché les empêche de reconnaître le Créateur. Cependant, l’extrapolation qui permettrait de passer de l’analyse rationnelle de l’univers présent à la compréhension de l’acte qui l’a constitué n’est tout simplement pas possible à l’intelligence humaine.

     – Enfin, le seul témoin de l’origine du cosmos est Celui qui l’a fait. La seule information possible sur la cosmogenèse ne peut donc que provenir de Celui qui l’a effectuée. Ici, l’information ne peut exister que par voie de révélation divine spéciale. Nous croyons que cette révélation spéciale nous est donnée, ceci plus spécifiquement dans les premiers chapitres de la Bible, par celui qui est lui-même l’auteur de toutes choses. Les évolutionnistes, eux, croient que la connaissance de l’origine du monde et des êtres qui l’habitent vient de leurs propres écrits sacrés, ceux de Charles Darwin et de ses successeurs, les Carl Sagan, les Stephen Jay Gould, les Jean Rostand, les Yves Coppens et tutti quanti.

Conclusion

     Il faut le reconnaître, Darwin figure en bonne place dans la tradition qui a produit la sécularisation, la laïcisation, disons-le franchement, l’athéisation du monde moderne. Parmi les figures récentes de ce mouvement de fond qui domine aujourd’hui toute la civilisation de l’Occident et qui sera sans doute bientôt la culture de la planète tout entière, Darwin a sa place d’honneur à côté des Hegel, des Marx, des Nietzsche, des Freud, des Kelsen et des Keynes. Il a sa place, et une place éminente, dans ce Panthéon de la sécularisation, de l’athéisation de la culture. Ajoutons ici que, tant le nazisme que le communisme, ont revendiqué l’héritage du fondateur du transformisme pour tenter d’assurer à leurs messianismes athées un semblant de fondement scientifique.

     Pour conclure, il nous faut reconnaître que nous nous trouvons, dans ce débat qui oppose Création et Evolution, en face d’un double choix, à la fois religieux et scientifique:
     – scientifique, parce qu’il faut choisir la science expérimentale contre l’intrusion scientifiquement nuisible d’une véritable idéologie, l’évolution comme hypothèse d’un modèle cosmologique universel;
     – religieux, parce que, contre la religion scientiste et panthéiste de l’évolution (tout viendrait par pur hasard d’une matière éternelle, ceci sans la moindre intervention extérieure créatrice quelconque), religion matérialiste athée dont Darwin fut un des principaux prophètes, il faut choisir de croire en un Dieu Créateur bienveillant et tout-puissant. Ce Créateur d’une sagesse et d’une bonté infinies de rien créa, au commencement, l’espace et le temps, les cieux et la terre, et tout ce qu’ils contiennent, ordonnant toutes ses innombrables créatures merveilleuses à la perfection propre à chacune, en vue de leur bien commun et pour sa seule gloire, celle du Dieu unique, Père, Fils et Saint-Esprit.

par Jean-Marc Berthoud
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Source: La Revue réformée

- Droits d’auteurs et respect de la propriété intellectuelle
Les articles sont protégés par une licence Creative Commons by-nc-sa permettant leur réutilisation, en stipulant :

*l’obligation de citer la source
*l’impossibilité d’utiliser ces créations commercialement
*l’obligation de partager dans des conditions initiales à l’Identique
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Jacques Monod et l'évolution théiste

2011-11-16T10:15:00.001Z

Jacques Monod et l'évolution théiste
par W. Peter Gadsby

Jacques se rendit célèbre pour ce qu’il apporta non seulement à son domaine de la biologie moléculaire, mais aussi à la philosophie. Il était ami intime du philosophe français, Albert Camus. Le livre de Monod, 'Le hasard et la nécessité », publié en 1970, se termine par ces mots :

. . . l’homme finalement se rend compte qu’il est seul dans l’immensité impitoyable de l’univers, duquel il a émergé purement par hasard. Ni son destin, ni son devoir n’ont été consignés par écrit. C’est à lui de choisir : soit le royaume des cieux, soit les ténèbres ici-bas.

En coopération avec François Jacob, Monod contribua beaucoup à expliquer comment les gènes règlent le métabolisme cellulaire en dirigeant la biosynthèse des enzymes. Il partagea avec Jacob et Andrew Lwoff le prix Nobel pour la médecine et la physiologie en 1965.

Jacques Monod mourut en 1976 au milieu de l’année, à l’âge de 66 ans. Le 10 juin 1976, l’Australian Broadcasting Commission Science Unit (le département de science de la commission de diffusion australienne) diffusa une émission en son hommage intitulée 'le secret de la vie'. Le programme conclut par une interview entre Monod et Laurie John dans laquelle , selon l’animateur d’ABC Robyn Williams [lui-même athée et anti-créationiste fanatique – Ed.], Monod révéla sa conviction 'que la vie et l’évolution sont dépourvus d’un but ultime'. Ceux qui désirent concilier une croyance en l’évolution avec la foi en Dieu devraient réfléchir à ses paroles :

Continuez ICI, s'il vous plaît

Sarfati: Evolution, Science, History, Religion

2011-11-15T20:04:00.001Z

The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution
by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M.
(A response to "The Greatest Show on Earth: the evidence for evolution")

Excerpts from Chapter 17:

Evolution, science, history and religion

     Dawkins resorts to guilt-by-association by comparing evolution-deniers with Holocaust deniers and deniers of the reality of the Roman Empire. Yet the Romans and the Holocaust are supported by eyewitness accounts and ample written records, unlike evolution.
     Dawkins and many other evolutionists fret that doubt of evolution will be the end of science, but most science works perfectly well without it, including biological. Indeed, most of the branches of modern science were founded by believers in biblical creation, including biological science. In reality, science flourished in the Middle Ages in a Christianized Europe, and increased further after biblical authority was rediscovered in the Reformation. This should not be surprising, since science requires certain presuppositions, and they are all provided by the Bible, but not by Dawkins’ materialism or, for example, by mystical religions.
....
     *The creationist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) fathered modern chemistry and demolished the faulty Aristotelian four-elements theory. He also funded lectures to defend Christianity and sponsored missionaries and Bible translation work.
     *Cell phones depend on electromagnetic radiation theory, which was pioneered by creationist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879).
     *Computing machines were invented by Charles Babbage (1791–1871), who was not a biblical creationist but was a creationist in the broad sense. He “believed that the study of the works of nature with scientific precision, was a necessary and indispensable preparation to the understanding and interpreting their testimony of the wisdom and goodness of their Divine Author.”9
     *The creationist brothers Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) invented the airplane after studying God’s design of birds.
     *The theory of planetary orbits was invented by Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), famous for claiming that his discoveries were “thinking God’s thoughts after him”. Kepler also calculated a creation date of 3992 BC, close to Ussher’s.
     *The theory of gravity and the laws of motion, essential for the moon landings, were discovered by the creationist Isaac Newton (1642/3–1727), who also discovered the spectrum of light (so was the forerunner of my own speciality, spectroscopy), invented the reflecting telescope, discovered the exponential law of cooling, and co-invented calculus.
     *The moon landing program was headed by Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), who believed in a designer and opposed evolution. And a biblical creationist, James Irwin (1930–1991), walked on the moon.
     America led the world in the number of Nobel prizes awarded, including in biology, before evolution was part of the school curriculum. And the Apollo moon landings were achieved by scientists and engineers educated under the same curriculum.
     Furthermore, these great scientists had precedents in the Middle Ages, often wrongly called the ‘Dark Ages’. Science historian Dr James Hannam writes:
     “Popular opinion, journalistic cliché and misinformed historians notwithstanding, recent research has shown that the Middle Ages were a period of enormous advances in science, technology and culture. The compass, paper, printing, stirrups and gunpowder all appeared in Western Europe between AD 500 and AD 1500.” (See Hannam, J., God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, p. 5, Icon Books, 2009)

...Then what about medicine? Dawkins touched on this with antibiotic resistance (pp. 132–3), as refuted in ch. 4. I noted that even antibiotics were developed by the creationist Jew, Ernst Chain. What about other advances in science that are rightly credited with the vast drop in deaths of children due to disease and elimination of many scourges like smallpox and polio? No joy here for the evolutionists either. Many of the most important medical advances were made without the slightest use being made of evolution:

     *Vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner (1749–1823—note that Darwin published Origin in 1859).
     *Aseptic surgery by Joseph Lister, creationist (1827–1912).
     *Anaesthesia by James Young Simpson (1811–1870), who believed that God was the first anaesthetist, citing Genesis 2:21.
     *Germ theory of disease by Louis Pasteur, creationist (1822–1895), who disproved spontaneous generation, still an evolutionary belief, as shown in ch. 13.
     *In modern times, we have the outspoken biblical creationist Raymond Damadian (1936– ), inventor of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner,15,16 and John Sanford (1950– ), the inventor of the gene gun.

...Dr Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School stated:
     “In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.” (Quoted in the Boston Globe, 23 October 2005.)

Read full chapter HERE

Journal of Creation: Back-issue article pdfs

2011-11-15T13:09:00.001Z

Tha Journal of Creation a' lìbhrigeadh bheachdan lèirsinneach sgoilearach, agus sgrùdadh beòthail air an deasbad eadar cruitheachdas is èabhlaideas. Gheibhear rannsachadh domhainn air iomadach cuspair seach saidheans, mar eisimpleir air feallsanachd, diadhaireachd, eachdraidh, arc-eòlas, eòlas-comainn, agus mòran a bharrachd air sin. Faic na ceangalan shìos gu tòrr aistidhean ann an cruth pdf.

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Journal of Creation provides in-depth, peer-reviewed comment, reviews, and up-to-date analysis of creation/evolution controversies. The journal covers a wide spectrum of studies, not just science. Powerful articles have appeared on topics such as philosophy, theology, history, archaeology, social sciences and many more. See links below to many articles in pdf format.

Volume 24, Issue 2 Published August 2010

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Volume 24, Issue 1 Published April 2010

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Volume 23, Issue 3 Published December 2009

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Volume 23, Issue 2 Published July 2009

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Volume 23, Issue 1 Published April 2009

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Volume 22, Issue 3 Published December 2008 ______________________________________________________________

"Buidhnean-Creidimh?": Còig Smaointean Rèidio

2011-11-13T21:53:00.001Z

Sherpa

Còigsmaointean-maidne a chaidh a chraoladh air Rèidio nan Gàidheal -

1:“Nua-Chainnt” Orwell

Madainnmath.

Saoil an do leugh thuriamh an leabhar “1984”le Seòras Orwell? Leabhar air leth cudromach a th'ann. Is e sgeul a th'ann mudhùthaich a tha fo spòig riaghaltais aintighearnail. Riaghaltaisuile-chumhachdaich. Tha dòigh gu math seòlta aig an riaghaltas smachd a chùmailair an t-sluagh. Is e sin tro bhith a' sìor chur às do fhaclan a tha buntainnri saorsa poilitigeach agus tro bhith ag atharrachadh ciall fhaclan eile. "Newspeak" a chanas iad ris. "Nua-chainnt".

Mar bhall-sampailltha Orwell a' toirt tarraing air an fhacal "saor" fhèin. Chaidh amfacal seo fhàgail san fhaclair Newspeak, ach bha ciall tòrr nas cumhainge air athoirt ris. Dh'fhaodadh daoine cantainn, mar eisimpleir, gu robh an cù aca"saor" bho dheargannan, ach cha robh ciall phoilitigeach aig anfhacal tuilleadh. Cha tigeadh e an inntinn dhaoine gu robh a leithid a rud risaorsa poilitigeach ann, bho nach robh fiùs facal ann a-nis a dhùisgeadh ansmaoin sin.

Nise, tha fhios nacheil cùisean nar là a cheart cho dona ri sin fhathast, ach nam bheachdsa tharudeigin caran coltach ri "Nua-chainnt" gar cuingealachadh. Is ecainnt "PC" a chanas sinn ris.

An t-seachdainnsa butoigh leam sùil nas doimhne a thoirt air seo. Dè an smaoin a tha air chùl anabairt ùr "Faith Group" (“Buidheann Creidimh”), mar eisimpleir?

Ach cuimhnicheamaidgu bheil aon dòigh shìmplidh ann gus a bhith cur an aghaidh cuingealachadh arcainnt 's ar smaoin: is e sin tro bhith cumail Gàidhlig beò mar roghainn eileagainn seach a' Bheurla.

Agus cuimhnicheamaidgu seachd àraid air Facal Dhè. Sin an acarsaid dha-rìribh againn. Mar a thuirtCrìosd:

"Thèidnèamh agus talamh thairis, ach cha tèid mo bhriathran-sa thairisa-chaoidh"

Beannachdleibh.

2.“Math” agus “Tròcair”

Madainnmath.

An-dè dh'ainmich sinnan leabhar 1984 le Seòras Orwell, agus an comas a thug smachd-cainnt, no"Newspeak", dhan Riaghaltas smaointean an t-sluaigh a stiùireadh. MarChìobair is coin a' stiùireadh chaorach.

Nar beatha sòisealtaa-nis tha Lagh na Dùthcha gar stiùireadh a-thaobh dè na faclan a tha iomchaidh,no "Politically correct".

Tha cuid a dh'fhaclannach eil ceadaichte. A-bharrachd air sin, getà, tha cuid a dh'fhaclan a thaceadaichte ach tha ciall ùr aca a-nis. Na faclan "Faith Group" mareisimpleir. Dè seòrsa rud tha sin?

Nuair a bhàsaich arcù-collaidh o-chionn dà bhliadhna, bha sinn gu math brònach mu dhèidhinn. Bhaar nighean na h-Oileanach aig an àm ud sa Cholaiste Chrìostaidh Eadar-Nàiseantaann an Glaschu. Madainn a bha seo aig coinneamh-ùrnaigh is ann a-mach air Salm23 a bha an neach-labhairt:

"Is ean Tighearna mo Bhuachaille, cha bhi mi ann an dith...Gu cinnteach leanaidhmath agus tròcair mi uile làithean mo bheatha".

Thug e cofhurtachddha-rìribh dhar nighinn nuair a thuirt a' bhan-labhraiche gu robh i gu tric a'smaointinn air "Math" agus "Tròcair" mar dhà chù-chaorachaig sàilean Dhè am Buachaille.

Nise, ma tha amBuachaille Math anns a' mhonadh, feumaidh Criosdaidhean deagh aire a thoirt gubheil Cìobair-brèige ann cuideachd, agus dà chù aigesan fhèin: Is e "Mealladh" agus "Magadh" na h-ainmean a th'orra. Tha an dàmhadadh-allaidh seo a' saodachadh Chrìosdaidhean a steach dhan fhaing ùr seoris an abrar "Faith-Group". Dè tha cur dragh orm mu dhèidhinn seo? Feumaidh tuèisteachd a-màireach.

BeannachdLeibh.

3. Turasair Bàta Aonghais

Madainnmhath.

Chan ann tric a bhiosmi air bàta, ach tha e còrdadh rium gu mòr nuair a gheibh mi cothrom. Thacaraid agam, Aonghas, leis a bheil bàta brèagh. Feasgar a bha seo mios air aisthug Aonghas cuireadh dhomhsa, còmhla ri sianar no seachdnar eile, cuairt aghabhail, mach a Cala Inbhir Nis, fo dhrochaid àrd Cheasaig, seachad airGearasdan Sheòrais, timcheall a' chosta dhan àird a tuath taobh Chrombaidh.

Bha mi air mo dhòighglan. Creagan ruadha agus achaidhean glasa an Eilein Dhuibh. A' Chuan a Tuaththar fàire. Frasan aotram nam aodann. Eunlaith na mara, sgairbh agus lachainagus faoileagan.

Bha buaidh mhòr aigfarsaingeachd na mara orm. Ach an rud as mò buileach a chòrd rium, nam sheasamhnam aonar air fior thoiseach a' bhàta agus dà leumadair-mara (dolphins) guh-obann dìreach fodham mar dhà einnsean gleansach Rolls Royce far itealan.

Dhrùidh an tachartasseo cho mòr orm is gu robh na deòir nam shùilean 's bha mi toirt taing do Dhia.Is e duine th'annam a churas seachad cus ùine am broinn mo chinn an sàs namchuid smaointean, seach a bhith a-muigh mar seo sna h-eilimidean.

Ceist na seachdainnsaa-rithist, ma-thà: dè an ribe a tha ceilte anns na faclan fàsanta ùra: "FaithGroup"? "Buidheann Creidimh"? Is e gu bheil iad freumhaichte ann an sgaradh eadarCreidimh agus Saidheans. Ciamar? Well, tha Creideamh ga mhìneachadh a-nis marrud a tha gu tur am broinn ceann nan dìlseach. Saidheans mar rud taobh a-muighar cinn, a buntainn ris na creutairean, na lusan, na h-eilimidean, nareultan.

Ach canaidh anSalmadair: "is leis an Tighearna an talamh agus a làn, an dòmhan agusiadsan a tha nan còmhnaidh ann".(Salm 24:1).

Agus canaidh Habacuc:"Gu cinnteach lionar an talamh le eòlas glòir an Tighearna, mar a tha nah-uisgeachan a' comhdachadh na fairge". (Hab. 2:14)

BeannachLeibh.

4.Sgàthan Kant is Sgàthan Sheumais

Madainnmhath.

Am bi thu toirt sùilair sgàthan mus tèid thu a-mach sa mhadainn? Chan eil an sgàthanbreugach, canaidh cuid. Ach dè nam biodh faileas an sgàthain ag atharrachadh arèir dè am fonn a bha ort?

Bha am feallsanachImmanuel Kant dhen bheachd gu bheil an saoghal timcheall oirnn caran coltach risin. Reusan mhic-an-duine a' cur rian is riaghailt air stuth amh tro-a-chèilean t-saoghail nàdarra.

Tha an t-abstolSeumas ag innse dhuinn gur e sgàthan th'anns a' Bhìoball, agus gum bu chòirdhuinn dlùth-aire a thoirt dhan sgàthan a tha seo:

"Oir ma thaneach air bith na fhear-èisteachd an fhacail, agus chan ann na fhear-dèanamh darèir, is cosmhail e ri duine a tha ag amharc air a aghaidh nàdarra fhèin ann ansgàthan: Oir bheachdaich e air fhèin, agus dh'imich e roimhe, agusdhìochuimhnich e air ball ciod an coslas duine a bha ann fhèin" (Seumas 1:23, 24).

Saoil am bi sgàthanSheumais, sgàthan an Sgriobtair, ag atharrachadh fo bhuaidh ar smaointean? Is eceist mhòr ar là a tha sin. Ceist iar-mhodranach (post-modernist).

Ach seo againn cnagna cùise. Mur eil sgàthan a' Bhìobaill a' dèanamh càil ach ar beachdan ashealltainn air ais dhuinn, dè am feum a th'ann? Chan eil e gu feum sam bith.

Tha e soilleir gubheil Seumas a' dìonadh làn ùghdarras a' Bhìobaill.

Am bi thu toirt sùilair sgàthan sa mhadainn? Cuimhnich sgàthan Sheumais, matà. Is fheàirrde sinn abhith gabhail ealla ri na chì sinn ann. Chan eil e breugach.

BeannachdLeibh.

5. Feansa-dealain Kant is Gould

MadainnMhath

Thogadh mi ann anCanada. Taobh a-muigh Toronto. A' tilleadh dhachaidh thar na h-achaidhean asdèidh na sgoile bhiodh cleas aig na balaich uaireannan a-thaobhfeansaichean-dealain. Cleas a bha èibhinn, ged nach robh e glic. Sheasadhceathrar no còignear againn ann an sreath 's grèim againn air làmhan càcha-chèile. Gu h-obann dhèanadh am balach ri taobh a' feansa gramachadh teann airan uèir-dealain. Is e an rud an còmhnaidh a thug glag-ghàire oirnn gum biodh ambalach bochd a thachair a bhith aig ceann eile na sreath a' leigeil eubh àsagus a' leum le seoc.

An dè thug sinniomradh air an fheallsanach Ghearmailteach Immanuel Kant. Tha buinteanas aigKant ri Alba. Bha seanair Albannach aige. Agus bha Kant a' feuchainn risceipteachas an fheallsanaich Albannaich Daibhidh Hume a fhreagairt.

Is an dileab as mò adh'fhag Kant sgaradh bunaiteach eadar saidheans agus creidimh - "thefact/ value distinction".Thog e mar gum biodh feansa-dealain eatorra.

Rinn Stephen J.Gould, am bith-eòlaiche Darwineach ainmeil nach maireann, neartachadh air a'feansa seo. Dh'fhaodadh saidheans agus cràbhachd a bhith nan deagh nàbaidheancho fads a thug iad an aire dhan fheansa.

Rud nach tug. Isfhada bhon a thòisich saidheins air a' feansa a leagail. Chan eil RichardDawkins, mar eisimpleir, a' faicinn àite sam bith ann do chràbhachd.

Ach chan eilcead-dealbhachaidh ri fhaighinn san Sgriobtar fhèin dhan fheansa seo. Thafaclan an t-Salmadair fìor a-thaobh Saidheins cuideachd:

"Muratog an Tighearna an taigh, gu dìomhain saothraichidh a luchd-togail."

Tha Crìosd a' leagaila h-uile feansa a sheasas na aghaidh. Mar a thuirt Abraham Kuyper:

'Chan eil aonòirleach ann an saoghal mhic-an-duine a-thaobh nach can Crìosd: "Is Leamsae!"'.

BeannachdLeibh.

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Dooyeweerd: Four Ideas from Kuyper

2011-11-01T20:50:00.002Z

Abraham Kuyper 1837-1920

Is a th' anns na leanas ach earrann air a thogail às òraid leis an tiotal "Meadhan agus Iomall: Feallsanachd an Idèa-Lagha ann an Saoghal Caochlaideach" a chaidh a liubhairt le Herman Dooyeweerd ann an 1964. Is ann leis an Dr. Glenn Friesen a tha an t-eadar-theangachadh Beurla seo. Faodar an òraid shlàn a leughadh air làrach-lìn Glenn Friesen AN SEO.

The following is an excerpt from a lecture called "Center and Periphery:  The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a Changing World", given by Herman Dooyeweerd in 1964. The translation is by Dr. J. Glenn Friesen. The full lecture is available on Glenn Friesen's site HERE.

The 1920’s were also a very turbulent time for this [Gereformeerde] circle. This was partly caused by the death of Dr. Kuyper, who may be called the spiritual father of the Calvinistic revival [Reveil]. Kuyper had awakened a part of the population who had not been viewed as belonging to the intellectual part of the nation, as the jargon of enlightened liberalism of the previous century might have called it. In general, these were people who mistrusted modern culture, and who regarded science and philosophy as dangerous. Kuyper taught them that such an attitude towards culture and science certainly was not appropriate for those who called themselves spiritual heirs of Calvin, since it implied a failure to appreciate God’s common grace. And that this clearly distinguished them from Roman Catholicism and Humanism. In many works, he had shown that Calvinism had a broader meaning than merely for church and theology. In his well-known Stone Lectures that he gave at Princeton concerning Calvinism, he showed– in a way that spoke to the people in a tremendous way–that Calvinism is an all-inclusive life- and worldview, which desires to carry out the Scriptural principle of the Reformation in every area of life. And Kuyper had developed a number of basic ideas, which would be of great importance for the reformational movement and also for the reformational philosophy that arose after his death.

In the first place, his concept of the radical antithesis between the spirit of God’s Word and the spirit of this world, the spirit of falling away. This antithesis was to be regarded as the central antithesis, which must come to be revealed in every area of life, including science. Already in Kuyper’s time, this was a view that became a true rock of offence; it went directly against the traditional scholastic teaching of two realms [of nature and grace].

In the second place, there was an idea that is most closely related to the first idea. Although Kuyper did not develop it in his great theological works, but rather in his more popular writings, it was an idea of very far-reaching importance. It is the idea that man was created by God with a religious center of life, which the Bible concisely names “the heart,” out of which are the issues of life. In Old Testament terminology, the heart must be circumcised. According to the testimony of Jesus Christ, it is from out of the heart that all sins come forth. And it is in the heart that man’s rebirth takes place, through the working of the Holy Spirit. This central Biblical vision of man had become lost in scholastic philosophy. And under scholastic influence, it was also lost in Gereformeerde theology. As in a flash, Kuyper again made evident this radical Biblical vision, and he confronted others with it. But such a flash of Biblical light concerning the center of human existence passed by unnoticed to the theology of his time. It continued to hold fast to scholasticism’s traditional dualistic image of man. And this [wrong, dualistic image] remained just as dominant in Kuyper’s own theoretical theological works.

Kuyper set out a third great idea, whose significance was not yet foreseen, in his still rudimentarily developed teaching of the distinctive laws and the mutual irreducibility of the spheres of life that he distinguished, especially of the various spheres of human society. Here he relied on a Biblical position against what he called “the blurring of the boundaries” in the prevailing culture. Kuyper forged his own terminology. He referred to his idea as “sovereignty in its own sphere”–a term that now, through frequent and not well-considered usage, has become worn-out [versleten]. But during his own time, it was a new and concise expression that gave notice of a reversal of the traditional scholastic view concerning the temporal life- and world order. But this deep purport of Kuyper’s conception of sovereignty in its own sphere was not at first perceived. Very quickly, its meaning was limited to the area of anti-revolutionary politics, where it had to accommodate itself to Groen’s Christian-historical vision of state and society. This was strongly under the influence of the German Historical School, to which the Lutheran statesman Fr. J. Stahl also belonged–someone whom Groen later very much admired. In its connection with this Christian-historical way of thinking, the [conception of] sovereignty in its own sphere, which could only be applied to societal spheres of a fundamentally different nature, was from the very beginning confused with the autonomy that for historical reasons had been granted to municipalities, provinces and water-board jurisdictions, which as parts of the state can really never have sovereignty in their own sphere. In this way, Kuyper’s great conception of sovereignty in its own sphere, which he had expressly based on the creation order, became watered down to an internally confused political slogan, in which people apparently had so little confidence that even during the time of Kuyper’s leadership, the idea was never included in the platform of the A.R. [Anti-Revolutionary] Party. And yet Kuyper’s original concept was deeply Biblically founded in the idea of the creation of all things according to their kind.

Kuyper developed a fourth important idea in his theological view of faith. Again, this idea is linked most closely with both of the first two ideas. Scholastic theology had always distinguished between natural knowledge of God, which just like other knowledge that remains within the “natural sphere,” can be obtained by the natural light of human reason alone, and supernatural divine knowledge, in which we can share only by means of special divine revelation, and which requires the supernatural gift of faith. Kuyper certainly did not dispute that true Christian faith is a gift of grace. But he did attack the scholastic view that faith plays no role in “natural knowledge.” He argued that the function of faith is created within human nature, and that it plays an essential role in all human knowledge. Therefore no science exists that can be neutral over against the faith that one proceeds from. But as long as the human heart, following the fall into sin, remains closed to God’s Word revelation, the function of faith that is created within man will acquire an apostate direction. It will direct itself to idols of all kinds. Only by means of the gracious working of God’s Spirit can it [our heart] again be re-directed to the Word revelation of the living God, a revelation that finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus. In this sense, Kuyper spoke about the plus and minus directions of faith.

It was especially these four basic ideas, which I have briefly summarized here, which were to have such a fundamental significance for the Philosophy of the Law-Idea, because the originally Biblical thrust [geladenheid] of these ideas broke through the scholastic direction of ideas in Christian thought.

(Excerpted from "Center and Periphery:  The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a Changing World", lecture given by Herman Dooyeweerd in 1964. Translation by Dr. J. Glenn Friesen).

Full English html version HERE

English pdf version HERE

Dutch pdf version HERE

Jonathan Chaplin: Public Reasoning

2011-10-31T00:01:00.003Z

"Talking God:

The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning"

by Jonathan Chaplin
(Director of The Kirby Laing Institute For Christian Ethics - KLICE)

Aiste a tha air a mholadh gu mòr do neach sam bith aig a bheil ùidh ann a bhith cur air adhart bheachdan Crìosdaidh ann an deasbadan poilitigeach no poblach.

Fìor bhuntainneas ri suidheachadh na h-Alba aig an àm seo.

Highly recommended reading for anyone concerned with presenting Christian views in political or public forums.

Very relevant to current Scottish context.

Quotes from extended article:

The restraints that liberal secularists would impose on religious reasons are discriminatory. Religious reasons in politics have as much civic legitimacy as secular ones.
.......
The stock secularist response – that secular moral visions are “rational” whereas religious ones aren’t – just doesn’t stand up.
............
Faith perspectives, then, may quite legitimately be brought explicitly into play in political debates, even in venues like Parliament, insofar as they bear upon public policies which are thought to promote the public good. Archbishop Tutu’s confession that black South Africans were “created in the image of God” advanced the public good because it spoke immediately and forcefully to a very specific public good question: the injustice of the legislation maintaining apartheid. If the speaker genuinely seeks to explain why his favoured policy advances the public good, then he does not violate any civic duty by also explaining how his public good reasons flow out of his faith-based reasons. But at this point a tricky question remains: may a faith-based reason be appealed to as the only justifying reason? Could there, in other words be “public justification by faith alone”? Again, given the logic of the model being proposed, it is hard to see how this could be deemed constitutionally illegitimate, even though, for the reasons mentioned already, it may not be very advantageous.
........
The goal is to give up the chimera of establishing “neutral ground” and instead work towards exploring the possibility of “mutual ground” – from which each participant can speak from faith and be heard in good faith.
........
Finally, if they [liberal secularists] could also bring themselves to acknowledge that secularism is a faith akin to that of religion, a more elevated and constructive debate might emerge than we sometimes see rehearsed even in our more sophisticated broadsheet columns.
.........
The hope is that we can move beyond a situation in which religious citizens constantly feel the need to justify their faith-based interventions in political debate while secular-minded citizens just get on with the job unburdened by such a task.

Extended article available HERE
(Find orange cover down choice column on right of page)

Brief version HERE
(Find "Spring 2009 Vol 13 No. 5")

SOLAS: Centre For Public Christianity

2011-10-24T22:05:00.003+01:00

Introducing Solas

     The purpose of Solas is to bring the light and love of the Good News of Jesus Christ into the context of 21st Century European culture. In response to those that seek to exclude Christianity from the public arena with their all encompassing, negative and intolerant claims, we promote the positive teaching and example of Christ. To this end we will work with all Christians; training, equipping, proclaiming, serving and teaching to the glory of God, for the sake of all humanity and the environment in which we live.
     Our belief is that Europe was founded upon and largely owes its culture and existence to Christianity but that there is a retreat from Christianity going on today. We believe that the rejection of Christianity into an ill-defined and untried secular humanism is at best a plunge into dangerous waters, and at worst, a return to the Dark Ages. Therefore we aim to enable people to reclaim their Christian heritage, embrace the renewing grace of God and exemplify Christ in all things.
     We intend to do this by promoting vigorous public engagement on a number of fronts. Christianity is applicable to every area of modern life and through the development of differing focus areas we will seek to demonstrate how public engagement can happen. We will encourage Christians and churches to use the arts, philosophy, music, history, society, media, medicine, science, theology and the community of the Church, to express and teach the Christian faith, as given to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We seek to represent Christ, his church and his word against all the misrepresentations that exist in much of our secular media. We will run conferences, training courses and develop high quality media resources that help all Christians. We will work in partnership with individual churches and Christian organisations to enable them to fulfill the Great Commission.
Soli Deo Gloria

_________________________________________

Solas Submission on Same Sex Marriage

The submission is written by Gordon Wilson the former leader of the SNP and chairman of Solas, and David Robertson, the director of Solas and minister of St Peter's Free Church in Dundee. Solas is an ecumenical Christian charity whose aim is to promote the positive teaching of Christianity in the public sphere.

___________________________________________________

Gaelic: A Biblical Defence

2011-08-12T22:28:00.002+01:00

Photo: http://osmalba.org/

‘Creative Tensions’ is the title I have been given. I am a Calvinist and I write mainstream poetry in Scottish Gaelic. I think that may make me a minority of a minority of a minority! However, rather than take you on a self-indulgent anecdotal meander I would much prefer to point you past me to the Bible and to any principles about language (one of my main preoccupations) that we can discover in it. Of course the idiosyncrasies of my biblical exegesis will probably tell you all you need to know about me!

Let There be Light
‘In the beginning was the Word’, says John. ‘All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.’ What are the first recorded words of the Word - the Logos - in Scripture, the first quoted direct speech? ‘Let there be Light’. Would it be straining matters to take from this the principle that all language, all speech, every word, should illumine? Let us hold the connection between light and language in our minds. The divine Word names the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’. He names the air ‘sky’ and the land ‘earth’. But he does not name the animals. This job he gives to man. We are told in Genesis 2:19 that God formed all the animals and birds. Then he brought them to man to see what he would call them. We can see in this perhaps the doting parent holding up a cuddly toy before an infant and enquiring, ‘What’s this? Who’s this that’s come to see you?’ And the delight when the child responds with its attempt to identify the object with a word. Again, we can see in it God stimulating scientific and artistic curiosity in man - the impulse to analyse and categorize reality. Man broods on the unknown, and the lightning of insight is followed by the thunder of utterance. The sound of its name envelops the animal, enclosing it in a concept-cage. Man now makes sense of the beast. He formally recognizes its meaning. Conceptually, he ‘controls’ it. Henceforth it will inhabit this sound. Like a TV signal its image will be transmitted from human to human whenever this sound is uttered.

Tower of Babel
The transmission of the modern TV signal requires a broadcasting tower. The first tower mentioned in Scripture is the Tower of Babel, which of course is central to the biblical teaching on language. Before we scan the passage in Genesis 11, though, let us consider a brief extract from George Orwell’s 1984:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and very subtle expression to every meaning that a party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’, since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 241-2)1

***

1 Now the whole earth had one language and few words. 2 And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, ‘Come let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built.
6 And the LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they might not understand one another’s speech.’
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth (Gen. 11:1-9, RSV).

In passing we might note that in the original an interesting literary device is used in the above Biblical passage (I have spread it to make this clearer visually). Each human quote in the first half of the passage is mirrored by a divine quote in the latter half. In this ‘hourglass’ structure verses 1-2 are matched by 8-9, and 3-4 by 6-7. Verse 5 is the pivot, the pinch, the constraining intervention by God. Early concrete poetry, maybe?

Curse and Blessing
It seems to me that Christians make a fundamental mistake when they understand the confusion of language at Babel as a curse. The ‘Orwellian’ totalitarian tyranny of the single language is surely the curse. As already suggested, there is a connection between language and control, between language and being controlled. In one of the essays in his book, Language and Silence, George Steiner discusses the effects of Nazi manipulation of the German language. He suggests they ruined it for poetry. My burden is that God has delivered humanity from the thraldom of Babel by giving us many languages. The single language was the curse - the multiplicity of languages is the blessing.

God’s commission to mankind through Adam was of course ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it’ (Gen 1:28). The impulse of Babel was directly counter to that. It was a centripetal rather than a centrifugal force. It promised unity, but it was an impacted absolute unity. Freedom is only possible where there is choice.

If we travel from the City of Babel (note that it was not just a tower) to the City of Athens of Acts 17, I think we can get further insight. Paul is preaching on the Areopagus.

And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’ (Acts 17: 26-8, RSV).

Here then in the New Testament we have a clear reiteration of God’s Old Testament directive that mankind should inhabit the whole earth. And it is not an aimless wandering which is in view. Both OT and NT make a spiritual commission of this outward odyssey. We are to ‘seek God and perhaps reach out for him and find him’ (NIV). Basically our responsibility is to spread out and look for God. We have to leave no stone unturned until we find him. Science is one way we are to search for him, politics another, art another, music another, language another. We are to ‘subdue’ each of these realms of life and bring it under the lordship of Christ. It is also nicely relevant here that the saying ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ is actually a quote from a Cretan poet of 600 BC - Epimenides - and the phrase ‘We are his offspring’ is from two Greek poets of 300 BC called Aratus and Cleanthes. Can we appreciate what has happened here? These men’s words have become Holy Writ! The Holy Spirit has quoted pagan poets with approval! What a precedent for preachers! What an endorsement of interest in world(ly?) literature!

Parenthesis: Calvinism
So let us in parenthesis ask the obvious questions here. How many Gaelic-speaking Calvinists could name three mainstream contemporary poets, let alone quote a line or two of their work? Why is it the received wisdom of the Scottish artistic community that the coming of Calvinism to Scotland was some sort of cultural Black Death? How is it that the Gaelic churches - ostensibly the last bastions of Calvinism - can be so fundamentally antipathetic to culture, to the extent of failing to provide the Gaelic-speaking believer with a shred of argument as to why his language is worth preserving from extinction? I heard one Lewis minister on the TV intoning that, since vacant pulpits of Gaelic-speaking charges were not being filled, he could only conclude that God was passing the language by. So is Calvinism just a Christian form of fatalism?

Rookmaaker and Dutch Calvinism
The late Hans Rookmaaker used to say that if the Christian neglects social, cultural and political responsibilities then we should not be surprised if our children or grand-children end up in concentration camps. Because we will have capitulated and ceded crucial areas of life to godless systems of thought. Rookmaaker was a Dutch Calvinist thinker whose main interest was the visual arts. In Modern Art and the Death of a Culture , he writes that the high point of Calvinist art in Holland was the seventeenth century. (In Scotland the phrase ‘Calvinist Art’ is an oxymoron. It is unthinkable.The two words repel each other like the negative poles of two magnets.) This seventeenth century Dutch flowering was short-lived, and Rookmaaker suggests that this was because Calvinist culture became quickly infected with a world-denying mysticism, traceable back through Anabaptists to the Gnostics. The Puritans were not unscathed, in his opinion. Magnificent as they were at best, they had their own quietist, mystical wing. It is perhaps pertinent therefore that, until very recently, practically the only prose literature available in Gaelic was translated from the English Puritans. There are others better qualified than me to judge, but perhaps we have a clue here to what has ailed Highland Christianity.

Rookmaaker was a friend of Francis Schaeffer, who of course had a lot to say on the importance of thinking through contemporary cultural and philosophical issues. It has been these men, and other Calvinist thinkers in the Dutch tradition - Gresham Machen, the early Rushdoony, Abraham Kuyper, and supremely Cornelius Van Til and Herman Dooyeweerd - who have provided me with the rationale and the impetus to get involved as a Christian in contemporary culture. A couple of short quotes from Van Til, for example:

The argument between Christians and non-Christians involves every fact in the universe. If it does not involve every fact it does not involve any fact. If one fact can be interpreted correctly on the assumption of human autonomy then all facts can. If the Christian is to be able to show objectively that Christianity is true and that those who reject it do so because they hold to that which is false, this must be done everywhere or else it is not really done anywhere. 2
The God of the deposit of faith must be presupposed and the understanding of the relation of God to the world must be to the effect that unless one presupposes this God there is no possibility of reason understanding anything.3

Dooyeweerd is not quite so suited to ‘sound-bite’ extraction, but try this:

The inner restlessness of meaning, as the mode of being of created reality, reveals itself in the whole temporal world. To seek a fixed point in the latter is to seek it in a fata morgana, a mirage, a supposed thing-reality, lacking meaning as the mode of being which ever points beyond and above itself. There is indeed nothing in temporal reality in which our heart can rest, because this reality does not rest in itself.4

I find in these men, and this tradition, the glorious vision of Christ as Lord of existence, physical and metaphysical. I respond to this. I am persuaded that this brand of Calvinism is the most biblical form of our faith. The absolute sovereignty of God is the plank under my feet. What of God’s sovereignty and human suffering, you ask? Innocent suffering is the deepest mystery in human life. All I can say is that to ascribe any ultimacy to chance or to evil is no answer. That is to make what we endure blankly meaningless. Either God is in ultimate charge of every atom and sees every sparrow fall, or there is no God. To say that is not of course to come any closer to squaring belief in a God who is good and almighty with the horrors of life. And anyway, theoretical or theological ‘answers’ to general human suffering run the risk of being offensive, if not obscene; as if the agony of multitudes on TV newscasts is in the least alleviated by what I think. It is only what I do that can (sometimes) make a difference. (We are really asking for ‘the new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness dwells’ to appear right here and now - but preferably skipping the Judgement Day, of course!) On the other hand, if I am the individual who suffers, that suffering gains in meaning to the degree that I cling to faith in the benign sovereignty of God (Acts 2:23, 24, Eph. 1:11). Because this God is infinite, the meaning (or perhaps better, the perceived meaning) of my suffering is limited only by my trust in Him. Nobody is saying it is easy. For many of us it is the final frontier of our faith. My position is that the good things in life have no meaning without Christ, never mind the bad things. And the bad things bite to the bone of our personal credos, so that we can speak only for ourselves. For others we do not offer theories (that was the error of Job’s comforters), but solidarity. That is affection and, where possible, action.

The burden of this talk then is that all truth, and consequently all meaning, comes from Christ. And as I have indicated, I have found almost all my fortification in this matter from Dutch Calvinist thinkers (though I must say that the longstanding friendship of William Storrar has been an added kindness from God). We should be the messengers of meaning. But so often we stay safe in our fox-holes, or lose our way somewhere out there in no-man’s land, pinned down by enemy fire. The message does not get through. We really ought to be whooping courageously, laughingly even, into the thickest of the fighting. Because we in point of fact are not following a mirage or a dream. The key of reality, the bayonet of reality, is in our grasp. Christ is true. Christ only is true (would that I believed that more consistently myself!). Without him the human enterprise is indeed a catastrophic planetary delusion. ‘For from him, and through him, and to him are all things’ (Rom. 11:36). All things. All meaning belongs to Christ. All truth. Whether or not it is discovered by Christians! Calvin strongly supports this view:

Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the giver. How then can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules of discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry on our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude; an ingratitude not chargeable even on heathen poets, who acknowledged that philosophy and laws, and all useful arts were the inventions of the gods. Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term ‘carnal’ are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, notwithstanding its having been despoiled of the true good....
Nor is there any ground for asking what concourse the Spirit can have with the ungodly, who are altogether alienated from God. For what is said as to the Spirit dwelling in believers only, is to be understood of the Spirit of holiness, by which we are consecrated to God as temples. Notwithstanding this, he fills, moves and invigorates all things by virtue of the Spirit, and that according to the peculiar nature which each class of beings has received by the Law of Creation. But if the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other similar sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest, by neglecting the gifts of God spontaneously offered to us, we be justly punished for our sloth (Institutes 2:2:15-16).

I imagine that when Calvin refers to ‘heathen poets’, he is thinking in the first instance of Paul’s approving quotes in our Acts 17 passage. Anyway, here ends the parenthesis. We had dropped in on Athens. Let us now get back to Babel.

Implosion
We could say that Babel was a demographic, cultural and spiritual implosion. It was not so much that mankind had stalled in its commission - rather it had slammed all engines into reverse. This was an apostate human enterprise. Now here is another interesting connection. According to my NIV Study Bible, Babel would have been a ziggurat, i.e. a stepped pyramid with a shrine at the top. These ziggurats were intended to be staircases to heaven and were given names like ‘the House of the Link between Heaven and Earth’ or ‘The House of the Foundation-platform of Heaven and Earth’.

In Genesis 28:10-18 we have the story of one man who, as it were, turns over a stone and finds God - Jacob. Jacob uses a stone for a pillow and dreams of a ladder up to heaven with angels ascending and descending and the Lord at the top. It seems, however, that what is envisaged here is not a runged ladder but the staircase of a ziggurat. ‘How awesome is this place’, says Jacob. ‘This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’ And what does the Lord say to Jacob in this dream? ‘Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.’ This stone-centred Bethel -‘the House of God’ - is centrifugal. A multiplicity of peoples will be blessed.

Now Jacob was a cheat - a man of guile. In John 1, Jesus tells an Israelite in whom was no guile - Nathanael - that he would see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Had Nathanael been asleep under the fig tree? We are not told. But we are told that Jesus - the Son of Man - is the reality behind Jacob’s dream. He is the True Ziggurat, the true gateway of heaven. He is Jacob’s offspring through whom the diverse nations of the earth will be blessed.

Pentecost and Babel
Now getting back to language, I want to connect Pentecost and Babel. In Acts 2 the ascended Christ sends down the Spirit. This blessing manifests itself in the apostolic ability to speak Gentile languages. Can we make the link here with Babel? God comes down on the upper room in Jerusalem, our third biblical city. If, as is thought, they were in the Temple precincts, we have another stone ‘gate of heaven’ here. The utterance of many languages results. And the commission is outwards - to go to the ends of the earth. The Spirit speaks in our Gentile languages and his holiness is not compromised. The truth is not compromised. On the contrary it is by these languages that the truth of the moment is best expressed. The medium is integral to the message. Our Gentile languages are legitimized, validated. Their worth and status is proclaimed. Henceforth the Word will be inscripturated in Greek rather than Hebrew. It is symbolic, but not just symbolic. It is practical and tactical. Greek could say things that Hebrew could not, and vice versa. They are complementary. The historical suitability of Greek to convey the truth was as much a mercy of Christ as was that of Hebrew.

We read the passage from 1984 and we highlighted the word ‘city’ in Genesis 11 to emphasize that Babel is not just an edifice symbolizing humanistic religion - glory to man in the highest - it is also about isolationist culture and even totalitarian politics.

New Jerusalem
We have moved from the City of Babel to Athens to Jerusalem and to the place called Bethel. There is yet another ‘city-link’. In biblical symmetry this City of Man (Babel) is mirrored by the City of God at the end of the Bible. This fourth and final City does not rise impudently upwards from the earth. Rather it descends graciously to earth from heaven. We are told that the New Jerusalem will be as clear as crystal, that each unique gem-stone foundation will be inscribed with the name of one of the twelve apostles (plurality of identities not just allowed by, but underwritten by, Christ). The glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. Its gates will never be shut (Rev. 21:23-5). It is an open, pluralistic culture, focused on Christ.

And if I may be allowed some poetic licence here, Babel, far from being a sun radiating light (remember our initial connection between language and light), is rather a collapsed star - a black hole - its gravitational pull sucking in everything, even light itself. In terms of our quote from Dooyeweerd, Babel seeks a ‘fixed point’ in ‘temporal reality’. It prefers man-made brick to God-given stone. Language ceases to look for meaning ‘beyond and above itself’ in the Eternal Word, and so becomes babble. God comes down at Babel. Ironically, it really turns out to be the ‘gate of heaven’ (with God as gate-crasher). Remember the hourglass. Time runs out for man. The linguistic Alcatraz is liberated. The gate of the archetypal Gulag yields.

Search-lights
The light of God floods the black windowless skyscraper of Babel. It becomes a crystal - a prism of colours exploding in all directions. (Remember the transparent be-jewelled New Jerusalem.) Each refracted colour (each language!) is a search-light. Not like the search-lights of a prison-camp spotlighting escapees in order that they may be shot down, but tunnels of coloured light acting as corridors of escape. And the fugitives are not escaping from God - they are escaping unto God. For Christ is the True Ziggurat, the True Staircase, the True Door, the True Route of Escape, the True Light, the True Word. Only in him do our words have meaning. To him who overcomes Christ will give a ‘white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it’ (Rev. 2:17). To each a personal name (word? language? identity?) of God-given, God-filled meaning, rock-solid meaning. The Second Adam is the true name-giver.

The single language of Babel is refracted into the many. Why? To deliver us from the tyranny of pagan thought-control which a monopolistic world language threatens. To deliver us from the silence which totalitarianism always seeks to impose on the populace in its grip. God leads the jailbreak. For freedom Christ has set us free, free to seek God while he may be found and where he may be found (though he is not far from any of us). And each language is a searchlight with which to seek him. A fissure, a hole punched in the wall of silence.

Silence and Modern Literature
Vladimir. Écoute!
Estragon. Je n’entends rien.
Vladimir. Hsst!
Estragon. Tu m’as fait peur.
Vladimir. J’ai cru que c’était lui.
Estragon. Qui?
Vladimir. Godot.
Estragon. Pah! Le vent dans les roseaux.

Each language is a critique of silence. Much modern literature senses an encroaching silence. A gathering G-force of cosmic emptiness. According to Colin Duckworth in the introduction to his edition of En Attendant Godot, one of the convictions of Beckett is that ‘words give thoughts their existence and are therefore the only defence against being plunged into Nothingness (le néant), the Void (le vide) of silence and timelessness’. Duckworth quotes Pascal’s very modern angst: ‘Le silence éternel des espaces infinis m’effraie’ (The eternal silence of the infinite spaces terrifies me), and points out that Pascal’s remedy - ‘tendre les bras au Libérateur’ (to reach out to the Deliverer) - was not open to Beckett. For Beckett,‘such a reaction would be a sterile, facile, cowardly, and undignified failure to come to terms with the universe in which we live and to accept it fearlessly. The choice lies with each one of us.’5 Well, I am with Pascal on this one! And if I am accused of needing a crutch, I will readily admit it. Though actually what I need is more like a life-support system! But the cowardice bit (and the rest) is of course gratuitous. Neither my cowardice nor Beckett’s bravery can dethrone Christ if in reality Christ is Lord of all. Christ’s Lordship - that is the issue. In rejecting the stone which will become the chief cornerstone, Beckett senses the silence closing in. His tower of words is not so much a rampart of defence as a vantage point above the hubbub of the street, the better to hear the silence approach. For Beckett and other modernists (like Sartre) Godot never was, and if the universe is filled with anything it is with the dying echo of hollow laughter: ‘Maintenant, je savais: les choses sont entières ce qu’elles paraissent - et derrière elles... il n’y a rien.’ (Now I knew: things are precisely what they appear to be - and behind them... there is nothing.)6

If ultimate reality consists of void, and if we are determined that as writers we shall bear witness to what reality is, eschewing the escapist romantic fantasy that out there somewhere lies the Big Smiling Meaning, how shall we defend our very words from ultimate emptiness? Can we create words which have meaning ‘in themselves’? Can we happily dispense with the need to underwrite, to validate their meaning with reference to absolutes ‘above and beyond’ them? What if only escapist ‘let’s-pretend-there’s-meaning’ words are possible? What if realism reveals that the void is not just ‘out there’, but down here where we are also? That it is in the void that we ‘live and move and have our being’? That our words are hollow - that they have always been hollow - and that only the legacy of past faith-systems and current pretence save us from babble and silence? How will we build our great tower if our bricks are hollow and frangible? How shall we build without those white stones inscribed with meaning?7

In Beckett we find an increasing dislocation between words and meaning, between brain and voice. Syntax breaks down. Phrases are forlornly repeated as if in the hope (there is no hope, of course - he just wants rigorously to impress that fact upon us) that some coherent reality might yet be conjured up. But the incantation does not work. The man-made bricks will not transmute into white stones of meaning. The walls of silence close in further. In this context, we have also the stark, memorable imagery of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’ (though I believe Eliot is alerting us to a danger that he believes can be escaped):

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.
...Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
...For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

(T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems, London, 1970).

Nature and Wisdom
Christ the last Adam is the true name-giver. It is interesting to me that at the outset of his ministry Christ, like Adam, was alone with the animals (Mark 1:12, 13). Let us bring animals and language and poetry and wisdom together by turning to one passage of Scripture -

God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt.... He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish (I Kings 4:29-34, NIV).

So what did this wisest man in all the earth talk about? - Plants and animals! (And maybe this brings to mind a passage in the NT - ‘Consider the lilies how they grow - Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.... The Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom. And behold a greater than Solomon is here.’ Luke 12:27.) Each plant, tree, creature is an irreplaceable book of wisdom - library of wisdom. The extinction of a species is an incalculable loss to mankind - not just spiritually and philosophically but in inestimable practical ways, for example in medicine. Part of us dies with every species. With every extinction another door slams shut in our heads. What if every bird species dies out but one? What if every animal species disappears but one? What if every flower species perishes but one? Will we be all the wiser for that? We must be as interventionist when it comes to conservation of nature as we would be if we could salvage irreplaceable books from a burning library. And what of the demise of languages? Can it be that in this regard the Highland Calvinist suddenly becomes a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, survival-of-the-fittest Darwinist? Is it ‘only natural’ that a language which has ‘failed to adapt’ should become extinct? Is the world inexorably evolving upwards towards a single world language? The last time one language had a monopoly God intervened. Has he changed his mind? Can intervention on Gaelic’s behalf not be the will of God? Do we think God is as Darwinian as we are? And if all languages fail but one will we think that progress? Progress that one tongue should consume all others? Is each language not a unique articulation of reality, a treasure-house of wisdom? And as each language dies does a light not go out for ever? Does a door not close forever in the human mind? Is one more route of escape not denied the human soul? Is a monolithic monolingual Babel not being rebuilt block by block as successive languages fall finally silent? Are we so naive as to imagine that if mankind speaks only one language - be that language even English (!) - then civilization will somehow expand apace? If the grand piano swallows all the other instruments in the orchestra what will become of symphonies? Will not even pianists in time wince and wonder if there might be more to music than this?

And where are the messengers of meaning? It is surely a tragedy and an outrage that we who claim to follow Christ are so often diffident, dumb or downright deadly when it comes to natural or cultural rescue efforts? Who else on the earth but believers in the Creator should be arguing the case for the conservation of the creation? Who else but those who believe that the Word was with God, and that the Word was God, and that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, should be defending words from meaninglessness, speech from debasement and languages from oblivion? I am not just talking about lying and swearing and morality and piety! I am talking about the raw stuff of existence - the fabric, the warp and woof of life, the elements of daily human experience. I am talking about the lilies and about the hyssop that grows out of the wall and about the sparrows that fall! I am talking about words as an expression of the divine image in humanity, words, for every careless one of which men will have to give an account on the day of judgement (Matt. 12:36).

To our shame we so often stand ‘like coos lookin ower a dyke’ at unbelievers as they frequently struggle heroically to safeguard or salvage the meaningful in life. Thank God for common grace! Let me spit this out - a Calvinism, a Christianity which has no interest in the earth and the human lot on the earth is in my opinion infected with a hideous heresy, having more to do with Gnostic mysticism and Plato than the Bible. Cursed is the ground because of our disobedience. Can we not see? Can we not glimpse the glory that ‘from him and through him and to him are all things’? And so therefore all things are ours ‘whether the world or life or death or the present or the future’ (I Cor. 3:21)? Have we never read that the body is meant for the Lord and ‘the Lord for the body’ (1 Cor. 6:13)? That it was in hope of the redemption of our bodies that we were saved, and that the whole physical creation will share in that deliverance (Rom. 8:19-24)? That the consummation of history is not when the earth is abolished and we become ghosts in an aethereal heaven, but rather when heaven comes down to earth (Rev. 21:1-4, 22-27; 22:1-5)? Did the second Person of the Trinity become flesh in order to annihilate flesh? Did he become a man in order to dematerialize mankind? Has the second Man and the last Adam not the slightest interest in speaking meaning to the animals? Has he changed his mind about the lilies and the sparrows? Have we to abandon any notion of discovering wisdom in the creation? Has God not the least interest in scientific truth, political truth, historical truth, linguistic truth, and dare I even whisper it - aesthetic truth? (Lilies being more glorious than the bedecked Solomon is of course an aesthetic judgement.) Has God not the least interest in whether or not humanity invents the wheel, or flies to the moon, or whether our suspension bridges fall down? Is the earth no more than a seedy waiting room for an incorporeal eternity? What if we are wrong? What if there is work to be done? Has the cultural commission of Genesis 1:28 been rescinded? Does it not rather remain an integral part of the great evangelical commission of Matthew 28:18-22?

Stewards
Cursed is the ground because of our disobedience. Did not God make Adam steward of the earth? Are we not stewards still? Are we not stewards also of the languages we speak - how shall we preach Christ in Newspeak? What if our only newspaper is called Pravda? Are we not stewards in particular of the languages unique to our own nations? And if the saying ‘It is not the healthy but the sick who need the doctor’ holds good culturally also, then where should the attentions of the linguistically-called Scot be? Before the light fails. Before the wisdom dies. And what if God chooses to speak Gaelic to our generation? Is that ridiculous?
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no-one may boast before him (1 Cor. 1:27-9, NIV).
One of those beams of light from Babel is called Scottish Gaelic. It is flickering and fading. It was in our stewardship but we have neglected it. If it goes out there will be one less route of escape for mankind. One less window through which to look for and find God. Let us act. Before the light fails. Before the wisdom dies. Before the silence steps closer.

Christ is Lord of all. And should we the messengers fall mute, the very stones will cry out! As to what language they will speak, well...!

Endnotes
1 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 241-2.
2 Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia, 1967), p. 171.
3 Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia, 1977), p. 86.
4 Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Philadelphia, 1969), vol. 3, p. 108.
5 Beckett, En Attendant Godot (London, 1966), pp. xxxiii-iv, cxxxi.
6 Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée (transl. as The Diary of Antoine Roquentin).
7 Cf. Deut 27:1-8, especially in the en francais courant version: ‘Vous dresserez de grandes pierres que vous peindrez en blanc; sur ces pierres vous Ècrirez tous les commandements de la loi.’

(Originally published in Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology, Volume 14 Number 1, Spring 1996)

Dooyeweerd: The position of man in the temporal world.

2011-08-04T23:07:00.003+01:00

"A Highland Funeral" by James GUTHRIE (1882)

So it appears that the theory of the enkaptic structural whole forms the necessary connective link between the theory of the individuality-structures and their temporal interweavings, and what is called a philosophical anthropology.

All our previous investigations have been nothing but a necessary preparation for the latter. They all implicitly tended to the ultimate and doubtless most important problem of philosophical reflection: What is man's position in the temporal cosmos in relation to his divine Origin? This question urged itself upon us at the outset of our inquiry and it returns at the end of this trilogy.

Nevertheless the present work does not yet contain a philosophical anthropology. We have reserved this theme for the third volume of our trilogy Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy. The reason is that in our opinion the really philosophical problems concerning man's position in the temporal cosmos cannot be rightly posited without a due insight into the transcendental conditions of philosophic thought. And in addition a philosophic anthropology presupposes an inquiry into the different dimensions of the temporal horizon with its modal and individuality structures.

This opinion is certainly not in line with the existentialistic fashion in contemporary European thought. The latter seeks an immediate approach to the innermost sphere of man's temporal existence to interpret the I-ness in its situation in the temporal world from those emotional dispositions (concern, care, dread) which are supposed to be the most fundamental strata of human existence, i.e. its "Existentialen" ("existentials"). If HEIDEGGER'S "existential" of dread is replaced by that of "love" in the sense meant by the Swiss psychiatrist BINSWANGEER (the "meeting" between "I" and "thou"), then this hermeneutic approach to man seems to assume a trustworthy Christian meaning. This existentialism is not interested in the structural investigations which we deem to be a necessary condition of a really warranted philosophical anthropology. As a "supra-scientific" approach to man's existence it believes it has elevated itself above all structural conditions of temporal experience and can penetrate into its subject-matter by means of an immediate "encounter". "Enounter" and "experience" are opposed to one another as "genuine inner knowledge" to "objectifying outer knowledge".

It is disappointing but not surprising that different trends in Christian neo-scholasticism have welcomed this existentialistic anthropology as a "more Biblical" manner of thought in comparison with the proud rationalism and idealism of a former period. For what trend of immanence-philosophy has not been "accommodated" to the Biblical point of view and in this sense proclaimed to be "Biblical"? It was readily forgotten that the genuine Biblical view of "encounter" transcends any philosophical approach to temporal human life and that the dialectical opposition between "encounter" and "experience" contradicts the very core of the Biblical Revelation.

It was also forgotten that even with the Christian founder of existentialism, SØREN KIERKEGAARD, existentialistic philosophy and the divine Revelation in Jesus Christ were considered to be separated by an unbridgeable gulf.

The ultimate and central questions about human existence cannot be answered by any philosophy in an autonomous way, since they are of a religious character. They are only answered in the divine Word-Revelation. But our transcendental critique of theoretical thought has shown that this answer has an intrinsic connection with the philosophical questions concerning man's position in the temporal world. For this answer indeed reveals man to himself and gives theoretical thought, as soon as the latter is ruled by its radical moving power, that true concentric direction which precludes any absolutization of temporal aspects. It also lays bare the root of all lack ot true self-knowledge and thereby it unmasks the hidden basic motives of any kind of anthropology which holds to the immanence-standpoint.

Consequently, any expectation that an existentialist philosophy might contribute to man's true self-knowledge should be abandoned. This philosophy is no more fit to do so than modern depth-psychology. Naturally I do not mean that this recent philosophic trend has nothing to say to Christian thought. Its great representatives are doubtless serious philosophers, and their ideas deserve special attention as a manifestation of the spirit of our time, though the most prominent leaders of this movement have already broken with it.

But it is a veritable spectaculum miserabile to see how Christian theologians and philosophers seek their philosophical equipment here and join the existentialistic movement to combat the former invasion of Greek ideas into Christian thought. Apparently they have learned nothing from the history of Christian scholasticism. They reject the radical transcendental critique of philosophical thought because they do not wish to break with the time-honoured spirit of the scholastic accommodation of immanence-philosophy to the Christian doctrine.

But all those who have understood the necessity of an inner reformation of the philosophic attitude of thought from the radical Biblical standpoint, will comprehend why we emphatically warn against any exaggerated expectation concerning a philosophic anthropology. They will also understand our thesis that the central question: Who is man? means both the beginning and the end of philosophical reflection.

The question concerning the human I-ness as the centre of human existence has already appeared in the Prolegomena of our transcendental critique. But that about man's temporal existential form has been seen to imply a series of primordial problems which should be first considered. At least one central point of a truly Christian anthropology must be made perfectly clear. Man, as such, has no temporal qualifying function like temporal things and differentiated societal structures, but at the root of his existence he transcends all temporal structures. Therefore the search for a "substantial essential form" of human nature, in the sense of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical anthropology, is incompatible with what the Scriptures have revealed to us about created human nature.

In the radical community of the human race according to the divine order of creation, man is not qualified as a "rational-moral being", but only by his kingly position as the personal religious creaturely centre of the whole earthly cosmos. In him the rational-moral functions also find their concentration and through him the entire temporal world is included both in apostasy and in salvation. All things, beings, and factual relations qualified by a temporal modal function are transitory, the temporal bonds of love included. But man has an eternal destination, not as an abstract "rational soul" or spiritual "mind", but in the fulness of his concrete, individual personality. This puts it beyond any doubt that the various conceptions of "body" and "soul", or of "body", "soul" and "spirit" devised from the immanence stand-point are in principle unserviceable in a Christian anthropology which starts from the radical basic motive of the Word-Revelation. The all-sided temporal existence of man, i.e. his "body", in the full Scriptural sense of the word, can only be understood from the supra-temporal religious centre, i.e. the "soul", or the "heart", in its Scriptural meaning. Every conception of the so-called "immortal soul", whose supra-temporal centre of being must be sought in rational-moral functions, remains rooted in the starting-point of immanence-philosophy.

But all this merely relates to the only possible starting-point of a Christian anthropology. Any one who imagines that from our standpoint human existence is no more than a complex of temporal functions centering in the "heart", has an all too simple and erroneous idea of what we understand by "anthropology". What has appeared in the course of our investigations in this third volume is that in temporal human existence we can point to an extremely intricate system of enkaptic structural interlacements, and that these interlacements presuppose a comprehensive series of individuality structures, bound within an enkaptic structural whole. This insight implies new anthropological problems which cannot in any way be considered as solved. But they do not concern the central sphere of human existence, which transcends the temporal horizon. No existentialistic self-interpretation, no "act-psychology", no phenomenology or "metaphysics of the mind" can tell us what the human ego is, but — we repeat it — only the divine Word-Revelation in Christ Jesus. The question: "Who is man?" is unanswerable from the immanence-standpoint. But at the same time it is a problem which will again and again urge itself on apostate thought with relentless insistence, as a symptom of the internal unrest of an uprooted existence which no longer understands itself.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 3, pp 781-784)

ego

"Overboard and Sinking": A Sermon on Suffering

2011-08-01T21:48:00.003+01:00

Preached at Torbreck Evangelical Church, Inverness, Scotland. Evening 13 Feb 1994

Also posted HERE

Wikipedia

Reading: Jonah 2:1-10 -
1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said:
"In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.

3 You hurled me into the deep,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.

4 I said, 'I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.'

5 The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.

6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you brought my life up from the pit,
O LORD my God.

7 "When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.

8 "Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the LORD."

10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

This morning we were looking at Ephesians Chapter 4, and we concentrated on verse 21 which talks of "the Truth that is in Jesus". We tried to press this to the radical conclusion that no truth in any sphere of life floats freely in space - it is all rooted in Christ. Ultimately, no good thing has any meaning without Christ.

Now maybe that was the easy bit. Maybe someone could plausibly claim that this morning was just one more triumphalist "head-in-the-sand" Christian sermon. If Christ is the meaning of everything how does that tie in with the atrocities in Bosnia! What about those abandoned children with aids in Romania and Africa? What about famines and earthquakes?

Then maybe another voice cries out "And what about me? I am a Christian! God is supposed to love me and care for me, isn't he? Why is my life such a trial! such a shambles! so desperate! Where is the meaning in my life? Maybe the Truth isn't in Jesus! Maybe God isn't so Almighty or so Good! It seems you could name any disaster known to Man and find Christians who have suffered it! Weren't we promised peace and joy and victory and happy days? Who's kidding who here? lsn't it about time somebody blew the whistle on this charade? This make-believe? A lucky rabbit's foot Christianity is NOT!"

-"A lucky rabbit's foot Christianity is not." Too often of course evangelicalism is guilty of this "bunny-rabbit" theology: Christianity is cute and fluffy, lives in a burrow and seems to concern itself with nothing except propagating itself.

Biblical Teaching on Suffering
If "the Truth is in Jesus", we would not expect the Bible to deceive us. What then is the Biblical teaching about suffering? How do we square what we have been saying about meaning with the horrors of life? The fact is that we are not given pat answers. If a whistle needs to be blown, then the writer to the Hebrews has already blown it -"Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him." (Hebrews 5:8)

And then listen to Paul in Ephesians 1: 9,10. He talks of the mystery of God's purpose -"This plan, which God will complete when the time is right, is to bring all Creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head."

Paul is clearly and honestly acknowledging that everything in heaven and earth has not yet been brought together with Christ as head.

And in this morning's prescribed passage (Ephesians 4:30), the Good News Version reads -"The Spirit is God's mark of ownership on you, a guarantee that the Day will come when God will set you free."

But to say that is to concede that that Day has not yet come. The time is not yet right. You are not yet free. Your pardon may have been signed, but the prison door has not yet been opened. Why not? What is going on?

In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 Paul refers to the "Mystery of lawlessness which is at work". And I guess if it was a mystery to Paul then it will be a mystery to us too. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome. How comfortable could he have been? I imagine there must have been a fair amount of misery involved. In that not well-enough known passage in 2 Corinthians 11 Paul has obviously had enough of the "bunny" theologians - the lucky rabbit's foot brigade - and he lets them have it:(v4)

"You (Corinthians) gladly tolerate anyone who comes to you and preaches a different Jesus, not the one we preached; and you accept a spirit and a gospel completely different from the Spirit and the Gospel you received from us!

I do not think I am the least bit inferior to those very special so-called 'apostles' of yours !...

(v23) Are they Christ's servants? I sound like a madman - but I am a better servant than they are! I have worked much harder, I have been in prison more times, I have heen whipped much more, and I have been near death more often. Five times I was given the 39 lashes by the Jews; 3 times I was whipped by the Romans; and once I was stoned. I have been in 3 shipwrecks, and once I spent 24 hours in the water. In my travels I have been in danger from floods and from robbers, in danger from fellow Jews and from Gentiles; there have been dangers in the cities, dangers in the wilds, dangers on the high-seas, and dangers from false-friends. There has been work and toil; often I have gone without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty; I have often been without enough food, shelter or clothing. And not to mention other things, every day I am under the pressure of my concern for all the churches." (2 Cor 11: 4, 23)"Every day I am under pressure..."

This is God's man. God's strategic man. Do you think God has an odd way of showing it? Do you think Paul has chosen to present a strange list of credentials to validate his apostleship? He seems to be saying in effect "the fact that I am suffering so much proves God is with me". But lets not fall off the other side of the fence...

Different Jesus
"You tolerate the preaching of a different Jesus" Paul says. There are many, many "Jesuses" around. The Truth is in the Biblical Jesus, not in the myriad conflicting "Jesuses" which may be preached from church pulpits.The Jesus in your head and mine - where did He come from? Was it from the Bible? When did you last check that out?

So what does the Biblical Jesus have to say about suffering? If "the Truth is in Jesus", we would not expect Him to deceive us. So didn't he go on about peace a lot? Yes, the Biblical Jesus talks of peace. And also suffering. He lays it on the line. He does not mislead us. The Truth is in Him:"All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God... I have told you this so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you" (John 16:1-4)

And at the end of the same chapter (v33) -"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

That's odd isn't it? You would think He might rather have said - "I have overcome the world, so take heart, you shouldn't have any trouble in it. If you do, just let me know, and I'll fix it for you..."

What we are actually told is:"In the world you will have trouble...I have told you this so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you."

Different Spirit
A different Jesus. And a different Spirit, says Paul. In our day some quick-fix theologians have hi-jacked the Holy Spirit. According to their line of thought, if you are struggling as a Christian it is because you have not been "filled with the Spirit". If you had been filled with the Spirit you wouldn't be struggling. Is this scriptural? In answer we need only read the account of Jesus' baptism in Mark (1:10-13) -

"As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased'. At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert for forty days, being tempted by Satan."

The Holy Spirit immediately and quite deliberately took Jesus out into the wilderness to undergo stress and pressure. So if you are in a wilderness it does not follow that the Spirit must have left you. Precisely the reverse could well be the case. It may be with you above all that the Spirit is.

So we almost certainly could find Christians who are presently enduring every kind of human catastrophe. This fact ought not to take us by surprise. The Scriptures amply prepare us. The truth is that you would be hard put to find one believer in the Bible, Old Testament or New, who did not have it tough. Thanks be to God for the no-holds-barred realism of the psalms in particular. The glaring truth is, and how can we miss it, that faith and adversity buffet each other ceaselessly in the Scriptures. And the unpalatable fact is that faith seems to be rather like a rose bush: it doesn't seem to achieve its potential unless it gets pruned hard and has "dung" flung at it!

However, there is suffering and there is suffering. There is toothache and there is Nazi Holocaust. There are commonplace sufferings for which an evangelical band-aid will suffice. But there are also depths of suffering which are unimaginable and unspeakable. And there, along with the rest of humanity, you will find Christians. People no different from you and me. And if we expect otherwise, then it is not the Bible which has mislead us.

Psalm 1 - Job
To be fair, there are strands of Scripture, like Psalm 1, which taken in isolation suggest automatic immunity from trouble for the "faithful". But anyone who has bothered to read all of the psalms, never mind all of the Bible, will appreciate that they have just been peering at a detail of what is a much larger and more complex picture. Consider the Book of Job, for example. And if I might quote Francis I. Andersen from his excellent Tyndale Commentary on Job -

"The case of Job precipitates the test of faith in its severest form - the supremely righteous man who sustains the most extreme calamities. How can he, or anyone, continue to believe that God is right and fair in what He sometimes does to people?"

...The intense faith of Job immediately sees the hand of God in every 'natural' event. There are no 'accidents' in a universe ruled by the one sovereign Lord. Hence Job's problem. Such mishaps are not a problem for the polytheist, the dualist, the atheist, the naturalist, the fatalist, the materialist, the agnostic. An annoyance, a tragedy even, but not a problem. Suffering caused by human wickedness or by the forces of nature is ultimately a problem only for a believer in the one Creator who is both good and almighty; so this problem can arise only within the Bible with its distinctive moral monotheism...

...Job sees only the hand of God in these events. It never occurs to him to curse the desert brigands, to curse the frontier guards, to curse his own stupid servants, now lying dead for their watchlessness. All secondary causes vanish. It was the Lord who gave; it was the Lord who removed; and in the Lord alone must the explanation for these strange happenings be sought...

And then this inspired sentence from Andersen on page 89 -

"Job's faith does not relieve his agony; it causes it."
(Francis I Andersen, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP, pp 65, 86, 88, 89)

But look at what we've got here. One part of the Bible (The Book of Job) arguing about the theological adequacy of another part. It is all up-front and on the table. There is no conspiracy, no stitch-up, no editorial harmonizations. The debate, the dialectic almost, is carried on energetically and publicly. If Biblical writers find the theology they have been given at variance with what they are enduring as flesh and blood people they shout the odds loudly, almost blasphemously.

BUT by including in Holy Scripture what these men and women shouted at God, the Holy Spirit (and can we feel the relief of this?) thereby sanctions and legitimizes your shouts and mine. It is OK to shout at God when your life is hell. Who else would you shout at? lt is OK to batter His door in dereliction and despair. Who else's door would you batter? The precedents are in the Book:"Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us for ever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?" (Psalm 44:23,24)

What Holy Book could allow such fierce questioning of the deity? And then Psalm 22:"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent."(Psalm 22:1,2)

What Holy Man could find himself so derelict?("So far from the words of my groaning?" - we will pick up on that word "groaning" at the end of our talk).

Selective Bible Reading
Part of our problem is probably caused by selective Bible reading - privately, but also publicly in church services. Like children at a party we prefer to skip the ham sandwiches and go straight for the cakes. Or to use a more adult analogy, we pluck out attractive jewels from the Bible and hold them aloft to "oohs" and "aahs", but by not seeing them in context we fail to appreciate the enormous subterranean pressures which have squeezed these diamonds into existence. And we actually fail to see them to their best advantage, which is to be viewed against the velvet black of surrounding Scripture.

Take for example those well known verses (we have one or two good hymns based on them): "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness". Taken in isolation this could come across as almost a pat cliché of cosy faith. But have we any idea where these verses come from? They are verses 22 & 23 of the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Let me unsettle you by reading the preceding verses to you. As we read these verses let us appreciate two things. The Holy Spirit is forewarning us that believers may face times of unbearable anguish. And the Holy Spirit is telling us that it is perfectly in order, it is perfectly spiritual, to direct that anguish at God. It may be that you have never read this chapter privately. I am fairly sure you have never heard these verses read publicly before. And I am equally sure you will never hear them read in a public service again. But I guarantee that if you listen to these words - these desperate words - you will never see those two verses in the same light again. These are the words of a holy man. He is speaking about God -

"I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
He drove me deeper and deeper into darkness
And beat me again and again with merciless blows.

He has left my flesh open and raw, and has broken my bones.
He has shut me in a prison of misery and anguish.
He has forced me to live in the stagnant darkness of death.

He has bound me in chains; I am a prisoner with no hope of escape.
I cry aloud for help, but God refuses to listen;
I stagger as I walk; stone walls block me wherever I turn.

He waited for me like a bear; he pounced on me like a lion.
He chased me off the road, tore me to pieces, and left me.
He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows.

He shot his arrows deep into my body.
People laugh at me all day long; I am a joke to them all.
Bitter suffering is all he has given me for food and drink.

He rubbed my face in the ground and broke my teeth on the gravel.
I have forgotten what health and peace and happiness are.
I have not much longer to live; my hope in the Lord is gone.

The thought of my pain, my homelessness, is bitter poison;
I think of it constantly and my spirit is depressed.
Yet my hope returns when I remember this one thing:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.

Great is Thy faithfulness..."

Any Truth Worth Suffering For?
The painter Van Gogh said (and this is for Donald Black):"It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble, and you risk your life for it."

Few of us think art - colours on a canvas - aesthetic truth - worth suffering for. So what Truth do we consider worth the discomfort demanded by seeking it? Is there any Truth we would endure trouble for, even risk our life for?

Not Unspiritual
So Jeremiah and Job and Jonah and the Psalmist and Jesus Himself show us that it is not unspiritual to pound God's door and to robustly enquire what's going on. Because it is only the beautiful faith that God is there and that He is merciful which motivates the pounding. The beautiful faith that despite all appearances to the contrary, God is in charge and God is kind. This faith is the opposite of fatalism, for it looks to a God Who is not predestined, a God Who can change the future if we ask Him. Despite (or indeed rather, properly understood,in the light of) the great and courageous and majestic Christian doctrine of predestination, we have a God Who says to us simply"Knock - And the door shall he opened".

It is not unspiritual to batter and belabour God's Door. Unspirituality starts rather when we turn from that Door in disillusionment, concluding that there's nobody at home, or that if He is, He is a heartless capricious tyrant with whom we want nothing to do. Do you remember the incident at the end of John ch. 6? Jesus has just been telling his followers at length how He was the true Manna - the true Bread - that came down from heaven. He expressed it however in shockingly literal terms:"I tell you the truth: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will not have life in yourselves", and so on.

This produced consternation among his listeners. Verse 60 goes on"Many of his followers heard this and said,'This teaching is too hard. Who can listen to it?' "

This in turn provokes the crisis of verse 66 -"Because of this many of Jesus' followers turned back and would not go with him any more. So he asked the twelve disciples, 'And you - would you also like to leave?'"

Then there follows the famous answer from Peter. What does he say? Does he say: "Lord, we've nowhere else to go now. The only folk we know are here - so we may as well stick around."? No. He says:"Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life."

We can be pretty sure that Peter didn't understand the "manna" talk particularly better than anyone else. He just hung on despite it all, because of his basic trust of Jesus. Of course the day, or rather night, would come when the unbearable pressures on Peter would cause him to utter the unthinkable: "I never knew the man!" When a sudden colossal wave of opposition hit him the big fisherman sank like the stone he was named after. But not without trace. For he was washed up on a beach. And a Man came looking for him. A Man he knew well...

Overboard
Maybe you feel you have been washed overboard. The winds have stunned you and the waves have swamped you. You have sunk like a stone. Like Jonah, the seaweed has wrapped itself around your head. You have not the strength to swim. Nor do you know any longer which direction to turn. Do not let God go. Though He slay you, you must trust Him. The Bible is your life-belt. Cling to it and it will in time bring you in sight of shore. You will see a Man standing there. You will know Him well... I do believe that.

"Of all human beings," says Francis Andersen in his commentary on Job, "the innocent sufferer stands nearest to God. One might ask if there is any pathway into the light except through dereliction. Job's final contentment is inexplicable unless he found in the valley of the shadow of death a place of spiritual growth...Moses in Midian, David in his hide-out, Jeremiah and Joseph in the pit, Daniel in the lion's den, Paul in more than one prison. Like Job on the city dump, their life would seem to have reached its end. The long wait, sometimes for years. The silence of God. But deliverance came, and with it a gratitude never felt by those who never knew despair".
(Francis I Andersen, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP)

And then again the quality and honesty of Andersen comes through as his mind turns to Hebrews:"The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 were all sufferers", he observes,"and many died without deliverance" (p 72)

In fact if we check out the closing verses of Hebrews 11 we find that the Biblical writer is even more sobering:"These were all commended for their faith. Yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect" (v39)

One of the enigmas of real suffering is that the sufferer experiences both an overwhelming sense of isolation and a profound sense of having entered a fellowship of suffering humanity which seems almost sacred.

Bottom Line
Whatever befalls the Christian, our call is to do our best to affirm God within the experience, and to sustain as best we can the effort of faithfully seeking God for deliverance. But the bottom line is this - some Christians will suffer anguish from which there will be no deliverance before death. The agony of that prospect will for many seem unbearable. Those of us who know people who carry such a burden must pray that their faith shall not fail and that God will invade the darkness which engulfs them with some transcendent compensatory Glory. "He who is able to receive this, let him receive it" (Matt 19:12)

* * *

"All power in heaven and earth has been given to Me", says the risen Christ.

"Yet at present we do not see everything subject to Him", confesses the writer to the Hebrews.

It is the tension between these two truths which produces the stress for the Christian. Though we cannot see the presence of God in the physical circumstances of our lives, we are called to adhere to the belief (even if its to just cling heroically, pitifully, to the belief) that He is in control and that somehow, somehow, somehow, He is kind.

Like Moses in Hebrews 11, we are to "endure as seeing Him who is invisible", or as the Good News version puts it: "As though he saw the invisible God, he refused to turn back". We are talking about the doctrine known as the "Perseverance of the Saints":"Do not lose your courage, then, because it brings with it a great reward. You need to he patient, in order to do the will of God and receive what He promises. For, as the Scripture says [and here the Writer quotes Habakuk 2:3,4] 'just a little while longer, and he who is coming will come; he will not delay. My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with him'. [unquote] We are not people who turn back and are lost. [says the Writer to the Hebrews] Instead, we have faith and are saved" (Heb 10:35-39)

Not just Persecution
Romans 8:17 says: "For if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory".

I am convinced that we are not only talking about persecution here. Whatever you as a human being are enduring, if you can scrape together enough faith and strength to grasp Christ's feet and hang on, then your suffering is certainly Christ's suffering.

Futility-Groaning

"We are no longer to live", says Ephesians 4:17, "as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking".

In Romans 8:20 Paul tells us that the whole Creation is subject tofutility, to frustration, to purposelessness, to meaninglessness. And we are part of this creation. We are living in a war zone. But we endure as seeing Him Who is invisible. The atheist looks at creation and says "I see no God". There is a sense in which the Christian at times must agree. Nevertheless, we refuse to turn back:"For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. But it is not just creation which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves, as we wait for God to make us his sons/daughters and set our whole being free. For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who hopes for something he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Rom 8:22-25)

And so we groan with, as the Psalmist groans with, as Job, as Jeremiah groan with, as Christians of all ages have groaned with, together called to affirm the meaningful in the teeth of the meaningless, until the curse is removed from the ground, and night is no more.

We are those who believe that the Truth is in Jesus.
And because the Truth is in Jesus -

Nothing shall be meaningless;

Nothing shall be meaningless;

Nothing shall be meaningless.

Skottland til Nordsjøfarern

2011-07-23T22:54:00.008+01:00

   Skottland til Nordsjøfarerne
   Slik før de lange skip, da harde hender
   holdt Skottlands øyer under røveråket
   (ennu gjentar vår munn Norrøna språket).
   Da var vi fiender, nu er vi frender.
   Nei, Norges kjøler fører ikke nu
   den gamle terror gjennom storm og bølger.
   Krigsbrødre, følgende det håp vi følger,
   velkommen til vårt land far havets gru.
- George Campbell Hay / Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa (1942)

   Scotland to the North Sea Farers
   Thus in times past the longship, when hard hands
   held Scotland's isles firm under the plunderer's yoke
   (still our mouths repeat the Norse language).
   Then we were enemies, now we are friends.
   No, Norway's keels no longer carry
   the old terror through storm and waves.
   Brothers of war, you who are following the hope we follow,
   welcome to our country from the ocean's terror.
   (English Translation by Dr Arne Kruse)

   Alba do na Maraichean a Tuath 
   Dh'fhalbh linn na birlinn, eileanan Albann 
   fo chuing spùinneadair le cruaidh-ghreim 
   (tha fhathast nar beòil blàs Lochlannais). 
   Bu naimhdean sinn, is càirdean sinn a-nis.
   Cha toir druim-luinge Nirribhidh tuilleadh
   an oillt àrsaidh ud tro stoirm is thuinn.
   A bhràithrean-cogaidh, a leanas an aon dòchas ruinn,
   fàilte dhar dùthaich à uabhas a' chuain.
   (eadar-theangachadh Gàidhlig le FMF)

Scotland to the North Sea voyagers