Dooyeweerd: Meaning in the fall of man

Jan Davidsz. de Heem, "Triopall le Blàthan is Measan"

"Cha tèid càil san t-saoghal Dia-àicheil seo air chall ann an Crìosd. Chan eil pàirt sam bith de fhànas, chan eil beatha thìmeil sam bith, chan eil gluasad tìmeil no lùths tìmeil, chan eil cumhachd, gliocas, maise, gràdh, creideamh no ceartas sam bith as urrainn dhan t-saoghal pheacach a chùmail mar shealbh aige fhèin as aonais Chrìosd.

...Tha e gu tur taing do ghràs coitcheann Dhè ann an Crìosd gu bheil meadhanan sam bith air am fàgail san t-saoghal thìmeil a chur an aghaidh neart sgriosail nan eileamaidean a fhuair ma sgaoil; gu bheil meadhanan ann fhathast a bhith strì an aghaidh galair, gu bhith bacadh thinneasan-inntinn, gu bhith cur smaoineachaidh loidsigich an gnìomh, gu bhith sàbhaladh leasachaidh chultaraich bho dhol sìos ann am buirbe mi-chneasta, gu bhith ag altram cainnt, gu bhith gleidheadh comas a' chonaltraidh shòisealta, gu bhith seasamh an aghaidh mi-cheartais, agus mar sin air adhart. Tha na nithean uile seo mar thoradh air obair Chrìosd, fiù 's mas do nochd E air an talamh. Bhon toiseach sheall Dia air A chruitheachd leagte ann an solas an t-Slànaigheir."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II p 34)
______________________________

"Meaning in the fall of man.

     There remains, however, another central problem of extreme importance: As regards his human nature, Christ is the root of reborn creation, and as such the fulness of meaning, the creaturely Ground of the meaning of all temporal reality. But our temporal world in its apostate religious root lies under God's curse, under the curse of sin. Thus there is a radical antithesis in the subject-side of the root of the earthly cosmos. It may be that this antithesis has been reconciled by the Redemption in Jesus Christ, but in temporal reality the unrelenting struggle between the kingdom of God and that of darkness will go until the end of the world. The falling away from God has affected our cosmos in its root and its temporal refraction of meaning. Is not this a final and decisive reason to distinguish meaning from reality? Does not the radical antithesis between the kingdom of God and that of darkness, which our transcendental Idea itself also recognizes as fundamental for philosophic thought, compel us to accept an ultimate dualism between meaning and reality?

     Is sinful reality still meaning? Is it not meaningless, or rather the adversary of meaning, since meaning can only exist in the religious dependence on its Origin?

     Here we indeed touch the deepest problem of Christian philosophy. The latter cannot hope to solve it without the illumination of Divine Revelation if it wants to be guaranteed from falling back into the attitude of immanence-philosophy.

     I for one do not venture to try and know anything concerning the problem that has been raised except what God has vouchsafed to reveal to us in His Word. I do not know what the full effect of unrestrained sin on reality would be like. Thanks to God this unhampered influence does not exist in our earthly cosmos. One thing we know, viz. that sin in its full effect does not mean the cutting through of the relation of dependence between Creator and depraved creation, but that the fulness of being of Divine justice will express itself in reprobate creation in a tremendous way, and that in this process depraved reality cannot but reveal its creaturely mode of being as meaning.

     It will be meaning in the absolute subjective apostasy under the curse of God's wrath, but in this very condition it will not be a meaningless reality.

     Sin causes spiritual death through the falling away from the Divine source of life, but sin is not merely privatio, not something merely negative, but a positive, guilty apostasy insofar as it reveals its power, derived from creation itself. Sinful reality remains apostate meaning under the law and under the curse of God's wrath. In our temporal cosmos God's Common Grace reveals itself, as KUYPER brought to light so emphatically, in the preservation of the cosmic world-order. Owing to this preserving grace the framework of the temporal refraction of meaning remains intact.

The Christian as a stranger in this world.

     Although the fallen earthly cosmos is only a sad shadow of God's original creation, and although the Christian can only consider  himself as a stranger and a pilgrim in this world, yet he cannot recognize the true creaturely ground of meaning in the apostate root of this cosmos, but only in the new root, Christ. Any other view would inevitably result in elevating sin to the rank of an independent counter-power opposed to the creative power of God (1). And this would result in avoidance of the world, an unbiblical flight from the world. We have nothing to avoid in the world but sin. The war that the Christian wages in God's power in this temporal life against the Kingdom of darkness, is a joyful struggle, not only for his own salvation, but for God's creation as a whole, which we do not hate, but love for Christ's sake. We must not hate anything in the world but sin.

The apostate world cannot maintain any meaning as its own property in opposition to Christ. Common Grace.

    Nothing in our apostate world can get lost in Christ. There is not any part of space, there is no temporal life, no temporal movement or temporal energy, no temporal power, wisdom, beauty, love, faith or justice, which sinful reality can maintain as a kind of property of its own apart from Christ.

     Whoever relinquishes the 'world' taken in the sense of sin, of the 'flesh' in its Scriptural meaning, does not really lose anything of the creaturely meaning, but on the contrary he gets a share in the fulness of meaning of Christ, in Whom God will give us everything. It is all due to God's common grace in Christ that there are still means left in the temporal world to resist the destructive force of the elements that have got loose; that there are still means to combat disease, to check psychic maladies, to practise logical thinking, to save cultural development from going down into savage barbarism, to develop language, to preserve the possibility of social intercourse, to withstand injustice, and so on. All these things are the fruits of Christ's work, even before His appearance on the earth. From the very beginning God has viewed His fallen creation in the light of the Redeemer.

     We can only face the problem of the effect on temporal meaning that the partial working of the falling away from the fulness of meaning has in spite of common grace, when we have gained an insight into the modal structures of the law-spheres within the temporal coherence of meaning. But— and with this we definitively reject any separation of meaning from reality — meaning  in apostasy remains real meaning in accordance with its creaturely mode of being. An illogical reasoning can occur only within the logical modality of meaning; illegality in its legal sense is only possible within the modality of meaning of the jural sphere; the non beautiful can only be found within the modal aspect of meaning of the aesthetic law-sphere, just as organic disease remains something within the modal aspect of meaning of the biotic law-sphere, and so on. Sin, as the root of all evil, has no meaning or existence independent of the religious fulness of the Divine Law. In this sense St PAUL'S word is to be understood, to the effect that but for the law sin is dead ("χωρὶς γὰρ νόμου ἁμαρτία νεκρά" Romans 7:8).

     All along the line meaning remains the creaturely mode of being under the law which has been fulfilled by Christ. Even apostate meaning is related to Christ, though in a negative sense; it is nothing apart from Him.

     As soon as thought tries to speculate on this religious basic truth, accessible to us only through faith in God's Revelation, it gets involved in insoluble antinomies. This is not due to any intrinsic contradiction between thought and faith, but rather to the mutinous attempt on the part of thought to exceed its temporal cosmic limits in its supposed self-sufficiency. But of this in the next section. For thought that submits to Divine Revelation and recognizes its own limits, the antithesis in the root of our cosmos is not one of antinomy; rather it is an opposition on the basis of the radical unity of Divine Law; just as in the temporal law-spheres justice and injustice, love and hatred are not internally antinomous, but only contrasts determined by the norms in the respective modalities of meaning.

The religious value of the modal criterion of meaning.

     If created reality is to be conceived of as meaning, one cannot observe too strictly the limits of the temporal modal law-spheres in philosophic thought. These limits have been set by the cosmic order of time in the specific 'sovereignty of the modal aspects within their own spheres'.

     Any attempt to obliterate these limits by a supposedly autonomous thought results in an attack upon the religious fulness of meaning of the temporal creation.

    If the attempt is made to reduce the modal meaning of the jural or that of the economic law-sphere to the moral one of the temporal love of one's neighbour, or if the same effort is made to reduce the modal meaning of number or that of language to the meaning of logic, it must be distinctly understood that the abundance of meaning of creation is diminished by this subjective reduction. And perhaps without realizing what this procedure implies, one puts some temporal aspect of reality in the place of the religious fulness of meaning in Christ. The religious value of the criterion of meaning is that it saves philosophic thought from falling away from this fulness."

     (1) In his Kirchliche Dogmatik KARL BARTH has tried to escape this consequence by deriving the positive power of sin from the 'Divine No' placed over against His 'Yes' with respect to His creative act. But this dialectical solution of the problem results in a dualistic (at the same time positive and ncgative) conception of creation.

     The Divine 'No' cannot explain the power of sin, which as such is derived from creation itself, as we have stated in Vol. I.

     The idea of a negative creation is destructive to the Biblical conception of the integral Origin of Heaven and earth, because it implies that sin has a power outside creation in its positive sense.

     Creation itself implies the Divine 'No' with respect to sin in its negative sense as 'privatio'.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Vol II, p 32-36)

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"Brí i dtitim an chine dhaonna.

     Tá fós, áfach, fadhb lárnach eile atá ana-thábhachtach: Maidir le a nádúr daonna, is é Críost fréamh an chruthaithe athshaolaithe, agus mar seo is lánmhaireacht na brí é, bunús créatúrúil brí na réaltacht teamparálta uile. Ach tá ár saol teamparálta, ina fhréamh reiligiúnach dhiashéantach, faoi mhallacht Dé agus faoi mhallacht an pheacaí. Dá bhrí sin tá fritéis radacach ann i dtaobh-suibiachta fréamh an chosmais dhomhanda. D'fhéadfadh sé a bheith go ndearna an fhritéis seo a réiteach leis an Fhuascailt in Íosa Críost, ach i réaltacht teamparálta leanfaidh an choimhlint gan staonadh idir ríocht Dé agus ríocht an dorchadais go dtí deireadh an domhain...

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Vol II, p 32-36)

Dooyeweerd: Eòlas Làitheil, Saidheansail, Feallsanachail

     "Is ann aig feallsanachd a-mhàin a tha an dleastanas a bhith glacadh ann an sealladh na h-iomlanachd na h-aogasan-brìghe eadar-dhealaichte 's iad air an sgaradh le smaoin teòiriceil. San dòigh seo feumaidh feallsanachd cunntas a thoirt seachad an dà chuid airson fiosrachaidh làitheil agus saidheins speisealta."

     "Only philosophy has the task of grasping in the view of totality the different modal aspects of meaning as they are set asunder by theoretic thought. In this way, philosophy has to account for both naïve experience and special science."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought)

Ma Yuan "Ceum Beinne as t-Earrach"

"The theoretical character of the transcendental ground-Idea and its relation to naïve experience.

     The question may now be raised, why I conceived the contents of the transcendental ground-Idea of philosophy only as a fundamental determination of the relation between origin, totality and modal diversity of meaning in the coherence of the different modal aspects. Is this not much too abstract a conception of this basic Idea?

     We have seen, that naïve experience has not yet arrived at the level of theoretical analysis of the different modalities of meaning; therefore it does not explicitly conceive the modal aspects of temporal reality. Reality presents itself to the pretheoretic view exclusively in the typical total-structures of individuality, which encompass all modal aspects together; but the latter are not conceived here in theoretical distinction. Now it appeared, that naïve experience is in no way inconsequential for philosophy. Therefore, it seems insufficient to point the transcendental ground-Idea only toward the theoretical antithesis of the modal aspects of temporal reality.

     Every philosophic view of empirical reality ought to be confronted with the datum of naive experience in order to test its ability to account for this datum in a satisfying manner. Therefore, is it not also necessary to direct the contents of the transcendental ground-Idea toward the diversity and coherence of meaning in the typical structures of individuality?

The datum of naive experience as a philosophical problem.

     This question I will answer as follows. Philosophy must convert the datum of naive experience into a fundamental philosophic problem. For it is evident, that by maintaining the attitude of naïve experience one would never be able to account for that datum philosophically. Consequently, since philosophy is bound to the theoretic attitude of thought, its transcendental ground-Idea is also bound to the theoretical gegenstand-relation in which temporal reality is set asunder in its modal aspects.

     Therefore, philosophy cannot examine the typical structures of individual totality without a theoretical analysis of their given unity. These structures, too, must be made a philosophical problem, and this problem can be no other but that of their temporal unity in the modal diversity of meaning, manifesting itself in the different aspects of reality. Their typical character and their relation to concrete individuality does not derogate

from this state of affairs.

     Besides, the transcendental ground-Idea of meaning implies a relation to the cosmonomic side as well as to the factual subject side of temporal reality. And the latter is by nature individual. In other words, this transcendental Idea is also a ground-Idea of type and individuality, but it is always bound to the theoretical gegenstand-relation.

The naive concept of the thing and the special scientific concept of function.

     On the level of modern scientific thought the naïve concept of the thing is in the process of being broken up into functional concepts. This is done in order to gain knowledge of the functional coherence of the phenomena within a special modal aspect. Under the influence of the classic Humanistic ideal of science, which we shall examine presently in detail, there was even an evident tendency to eliminate the typical structures of individuality and to dissolve the entire empirical reality into a continuous functional system of causal relations. This was, to be sure, an absolutizing of the scientific concept of function and it could only lead philosophical thought astray. However, this consideration does not derogate from the value of the concept of function as such.       

     The gain accruing from its application in the different branches of science was enormous. One by one, the modal aspects of temporal reality, especially the mathematical and physical ones, opened to penetrating scientific analysis the secret of their immanent functional relations and laws.

     But the more deeply special scientific thought penetrated into its "Gegenstand" (i.e. the abstracted special aspect of reality which limits its field of research), the more sharply was revealed the fundamental deficiency of theoretical thought in comparison with naïve experience.

     By being bound to a special scientific viewpoint, a special science loses the vision of the whole with respect to empirical reality, and consequently the integral empirical reality itself is lost from its grasp. If special science were to be entirely autonomous, this void could never be filled and special science would be impossible for lack of a veritable view of reality. For temporal reality is not given in abstracted modal aspects; it does not give itself „gegenständlich". Special science is never in a position to account for our naïve experience of things; it cannot even render an account of its own possibility.

     Naïve experience has an integral vision of the whole, so far as it conceives of temporal things and events in their typical structures of individual totality. Furthermore, so far as it is rooted in the ground-motive of the Christian religion, naïve experience also has the radical and integral view of temporal reality by which the latter is concentrically conceived in its true religious root and in its relation to its true Origin. But its view of the whole is a naïve one, which for lack of a theoretical insight into the modal diversity of meaning does not satisfy the requirements of the transcendental ground-Idea as hypothesis of philosophic thought. The concrete unity of things is not a problem to naïve experience.

Philosophy, special science, and naive experience.

Only philosophy has the task of grasping in the view of totality the different modal aspects of meaning as they are set asunder by theoretic thought. In this way, philosophy has to account for both naïve experience and special science."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I: pp 82-85)

καινὰ πάντα ποιῶ: ním na huile neithe núadh

Reultneul an Dealain-dè (NASA)

21:4  καὶ ἐξαλείψει ὁ Θεὸς πᾶν δάκρυον ἀπὸ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν καὶ ὁ θάνατος οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι οὔτε πένθος οὔτε κραυγὴ οὔτε πόνος οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι ὅτι τὰ πρῶτα ἀπῆλθον

21:4 Agus glanfuidh Día gach uile dhéor ó na súilibh; agus ní bhiáidh bás ann ní sa mhó, ná caói, ná éighmhe, agus ní bhiáidh sáothar ann ní sa mhó: óir do chúadar na céidneithe thoruinn. 

21:5  Καὶ εἶπεν ὁ καθήμενος ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου, Ἰδού, καινὰ πάντα ποιῶ καὶ λέγει μοι, Γράψον ὅτι οὗτοι οἱ λόγοι ἀληθινοί καὶ πιστοὶ εἰσιν

21:5 Agus a dubhairt an tí do bhí na shuidhe sa gcathaóir, Féuch, do ním na huile neithe núadh. Agus a dubhairt sé ríom, Sgríobh : óir is fírinneach díleas na bríathrasa. 

21:6  καὶ εἶπέν μοι γέγονεν ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ τέλος ἐγὼ τῷ διψῶντι δώσω ἐκ τῆς πηγῆς τοῦ ὕδατος τῆς ζωῆς δωρεάν

21:6 Agus a dubhairt sé riom, Atá sé déunta. As mise Alpha agus Oméga, an tosach agus an deireadh. Do bhéura mé don tí ar a bhfuil tart ní ré ibhe do thobar uisge na beatha a naisgidh. 

(Taisbeunadh 21:4-6, Ó Dómhnuill, 1640)

Jonathan Chaplin: Caoin-fhulangas fo Cheist

Jonathan Chaplin

"Is e prìomh cheist aig cridhe a' chòmhstri sa bheil comainn Crìosdaidh an sàs an ceartair co-dhiù a bheil cuid de sheasamhan teagasgail no mòralta  - gu sònraichte a thaobh fearas-feise - dhen aon gnè ri gràin-cinnidh, agus mar sin àraidh air an casg mar sheasamhan claon-riaghailteach, no a bheil iad nas coltaiche ri barailean ideòlach chomann pàrtidh-phoilitigeach no feimineach, agus mar sin àraidh air an dìonadh. 
              ...Uill, ciamar am bu chòir dhan cheist sin fhuasgladh?"

["A key question at the heart of the recent conflict involving Christian societies is whether certain doctrinal or moral standpoints—notably on homosexual sex—fall into the same category as racism and so merit proscription as arbitrary, or whether they are more like the ideological convictions of party political or feminist societies and so merit protection.
                 ...Well, how should that question be resolved?"]

Living with Liberalism: understanding regimes of tolerance (Jonathan Chaplin, 2006)

Dooyeweerd: Bith agus Brìgh

"Is ann ri Dia a-mhàin a bhuineas bith, 
fhads nach eil aig a' chruitheachd ach brìgh."

"Being is only to be ascribed to God, 
whereas creation has only meaning."

(Herman Dooyeweerd: 
A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p 73, bonn-nota) 

Pieter Bruegel: "Sealgairean san t-Sneachd" (1565)

      "The question: what is meaning? cannot be answered without our reflecting on the Origin and unity of all temporal meaning, because this answer depends on the cosmonomic Idea of philosophical thought. Not a single temporal structure of meaning exists in itself (an sich). That which makes it into meaning lies beyond the limit of time. Meaning is 'ex origine' the convergence of all temporal aspects of existence into one supertemporal focus, and this focus, as we have seen, is the religious root of creation, which has meaning and hence existence only in virtue of the sovereign creative act of God.
     The fulness of meaning is implied in the religious image of God, expressing itself in the root of our cosmos and in the splitting up of that root in time.
     This religious fulness of meaning, given only in Christ, as the new root of creation, is not an abstract 'eidos', not an 'Idea', but it implies the fulness of created reality, again directed to God.

     Especially in accordance with the Christian confession about Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption, it will not do to conceive of created reality as merely the bearer of meaning, as possessing meaning, as is done in immanence-philosophy.

     Such a conception remains founded in an Idea of the 'being of what is', which is incompatible with the radically Christian confession of the absolute sovereignty of God, the Creator, and of the fulness of created meaning in Christ. It is especially in conflict with the view resulting from the Christian attitude, stating that no single aspect of the meaning of reality may be depreciated in favour of certain absolutized aspects. There is an after-effect of the form-matter-scheme of immanence-philosophy discernible in the distinction between reality and meaning. In particular it is the opinion that 'meaning' would be exclusively ideal, supertemporal and abstract — a view found again in THEODOR LITT'S conception of thinking in the so-called cultural sciences — which is the foundation of this distinction.

     HUSSERL thinks he can carry ad absurdum the view that natural reality itself would be meaning, by means of the simple remark: meaning cannot be burnt down like a house. And again this remark is founded in the concept of matter and the (semi-Platonic) concept of form of immanence-philosophy: the sensory impressions of nature are 'merely factual reality'; meaning, however, is the 'eidos', the ideal "Bedeutung" (signification). But, in the Christian attitude the Archimedean point is radically different from that of immanence-philosophy. If it is admitted that all the aspects of reality are aspects of meaning, and that all individual things exist only in a structure of meaning, so that the burning house itself, as regards its temporal mode of being as a 'thing', has an individual temporal structure of meaning, then HUSSERL'S remark loses all its value.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo: "Teine" (1566)

     If created things are only the bearers of meaning, they themselves must have another mode of being different from that of the dependent creaturely existence referring beyond and above itself, and in no way self-sufficient. Then with immanence-philosophy it must be possible to abstract meaning from reality.

     Then we fall back into the form-matter-scheme of immanence-philosophy in whatever different varieties and shades of meaning it may be propounded. Then the religious fulness of meaning of our created cosmos in Christ must be an abstract value or a transcendental Idea and nothing more.

     But, if 'meaning' is nothing but the creaturely mode of being under the law, consisting exclusively in a religious relation of dependence on God, then branding the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea as a kind of 'meaning-idealism' appears to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding.

     I trust I have precluded once for all this misconception, which has arisen in a quarter so congenial to this philosophy. The struggle to shake off the fetters of the basic schemes of immanence-philosophy from our thinking is an extremely difficult task, and it is quite explicable that there may arise some misunderstandings.

     Should there be some misconception on my part, and should it be possible on biblical grounds to show that (religious) meaning is not the mode of being of created reality, I shall not for a moment hesitate to revise my conception on this point. If I see aright, however, the difference on this head between my view and that of STOKER, mentioned in the Prolegomena, is of a provisional character and is connected with the question raised by him, if Christian philosophy can indeed do without the concept of substance. Now I stick to my opinion that this question can only be considered to some purpose, if beforehand the preliminary question has been answered: What is the creaturely mode of being, what is the being of all created existence? The answer to the latter question is of primary importance; for the sense in which a new concept of substance, if any, is to be taken, depends on this answer.

     And that is why I believe that it is not right to criticize the conception of meaning as the creaturely mode of being by means of a concept of substance of which the meaning has not been further defined."

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II: pp 30-32)

Dooyeweerd: Dìleab Arastotail agus Kant

Arastotal                                               Kant

Feart os-indibhidealach na puinge tòiseachaidh.

Tha aonachd bhuillsgeanach agus radaigeach ar bitheachd an dà chuid indibhidealach agus os-indibhidealach. Is e sin ri ràdh, an taobh a-staigh na pearsantachd (mise-fhìn-achd) fa leth tha an t-aonachd seo a' tomhadh air taobh thall an ego aonair. Tha i tomhadh ri na dh'aonaicheas an cinne-daonna uile gu spioradail ann am freumh, a thaobh cruitheachd, tuiteim, agus saorsa. 

     A rèir ar creidimh Chrìosdail, tha an cinne-daonna uile air a ghabhail a-steach gu spioradail am broinn Adhaimh. Annsan tha mac-an-duine gu lèir air thuiteam. Agus an lùib mhic-an-duine thuit an cosmos tìmeil gu lèir mar an ceudna, a bha co-chruinnichte na bhroinn. Ann an Iosa Crìosd tha an cinne-daonna ùr uile na aon ann am freumh, mar bhuill an aona chuirp.

     Ann am faclan eile, tha ar mise-fhìn-achd freumhaichte ann am comann spioradail a' chinne-daonna. Chan e "susbaint" fèin-fhoghainteach no "monad gun uinneig" a th'ann, ach tha "mise" beò ann an comann spioradail "sinne", air a stiùireadh ri "Thusa" Diadhaidh, a rèir tùs-chiall na cruitheachd.

Ciall prìomh-àithne a' ghràidh.

     Is e seo ciall dhomhain prìomh àithne a' ghràidh: Gràdhaichidh tu an Tighearna do Dhia thar na h-uile nithean, agus do choimhearsnach mar thu fhèin...

Spiorad a' chomainn agus an grunnd-bharail cràbhach.   

Nise, is e spiorad cumanta a chumas comann cràbhach a' dol. Spiorad a bhios gnìomhach (mar dhunamis, mar phrìomh chumhachd-brosnachaidh) ann am puing co-chruinneachaidh bitheachd a' chinne-daonna. Bidh an spiorad comainn a tha seo ag obair tro ghrunnd-bharail cràbhach a bheir stà do sprionga-buillsgein an t-seasaimh beatha agus smaoin gu lèir...

    O chionn an tuiteam agus gealladh teachd an t-Slànaighir, tha dà sprionga-buillsgein gnìomhach am broinn cridhe bitheachd a' chinne-daonna. Is e th'anns a' chiad fhear ach dunamis an Spioraid Naoimh. Thrèig a' chruitheachd Dia agus thuit i bhon fhìor Thùs aice, ach le cumhachd-brosnachaidh Facal Dhè, 's e ioncholainnte ann an Iosa Crìosd, bidh an dunamis seo a' stiùireadh na cruitheachd air ais dha Chruithear. Is e dàimh macachd ris an Athar Diadhaidh a bhios an dunamis seo a' buileachadh air mac-an-duine .
(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p 60-64) 

The supra-individual character of the starting-point.

The central and radical unity of our existence is at the same time individual and supra-individual; that is to say, in the individual I-ness it points beyond the individual ego toward that which makes the whole of mankind spiritually one in root in its creation, fall and redemption. 

     According to our Christian faith, all humanity is spiritually included in Adam. In him the whole human race has fallen, and in mankind also the entire temporal cosmos, which was concentrated in it. In Jesus Christ, the entire new humanity is one in root, as the members of one body.

     Our I-ness is, in other words, rooted in the spiritual community of mankind. It is no self-sufficient "substance", no "windowless monad", but it lives in the spiritual community of the we, which is directed to a Divine Thou, according to the original meaning of creation.

The meaning of the central command of love.

     This is the deep meaning of the central command of love: Thou shalt love God above all and thy neighbour as thyself...

The spirit of community and the religious basic motive.

     Now a religious community is maintained by a common spirit, which as a dynamis, as a central motive power, is active in the concentration-point of human existence. This spirit of community works through a religious ground-motive, which gives contents to the central mainspring of the entire attitude of life and thought... 
     Since the fall and the promise of the coming Redeemer, there are two central mainsprings operative in the heart of human existence. The first is the dynamis of the Holy Ghost, which by the moving power of God's Word, incarnated in Jesus Christ, re-directs to its Creator the creation that had apostatized in the fall from its true Origin. This dynamis brings man into the relationship of sonship to the Divine Father. Its religious groundmotive is that of the Divine Word-Revelation, which is the key to the understanding of Holy Scripture: the motive of creation, fall, and redemption by Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Ghost.
     The second central mainspring is that of the spirit of apostasy from the true God. As religious dynamis (power), it leads the human heart in an apostate direction, and is the source of all deification of the creature. It is the source of all absolutizing of the relative even in the theoretical attitude of thought. By virtue of its idolatrous character, its religious ground-motive can receive very diverse contents.

The Greek form-matter motive and the modern Humanistic motive of nature and freedom.     

     In Western thought, this apostate spirit has disclosed itself chiefly in two central motives, namely, (1) that which has dominated the classical Greek world of culture and thought, and which has been brought (since the time of ARISTOTLE) under the fixed designation of the form-matter motive, and (2) that of the modern Humanistic life- and world-view, which, since the time of IMMANUEL KANT, has been called the motive of nature and freedom. Since the 18th century, this latter motive came more and more to dominate the world of Western culture and thought.
     The former motive originated from the encounter of the older pre-Homeric Greek religion of life (one of the different nature religions) with the later cultural religion of the Olympic gods. The older religion of life deified the eternally flowing Stream of life, which is unable to fix itself in any single individual form. But out of this stream there proceed periodically the generations of transitory beings, whose existence is limited by an individual form, as a consequence of which they are subjected to the horrible fate of death, the anangkè or the heimarmen tychè. This motive of the form-less eternally flowing Stream of life is the matter-motive of the Greek world of thought. It found its most pregnant expression in the worship of DIONYSUS, which had been imported from Thrace.
     On the other hand, the form-motive was the main spring of the more recent Olympian religion, the religion of form, measure and harmony, which rested essentially upon the deification of the cultural aspect of Greek society (the Olympian gods were personified cultural powers). It acquired its most pregnant expression in the Delphic Apollo as law-giver. The Olympian gods leave mother earth with its ever flowing Stream of life and its threatening anangkè. They acquire Olympus for their seat, and have an immortal individual form, which is not perceptible to the eye of sense. But they have no power over the fate of mortals.
     The form-matter motive itself was independent of the mythological forms which it received in the old nature-religions and the new Olympian culture-religion. It has dominated Greek thought from the outset.
     The autonomy which philosophic theoria demanded, in opposition to popular belief, implied, as we have observed in an earlier context, only an emancipation from the mythological forms which were bound to sensory representation. It did not at all imply a loosening of philosophic thought from the central religious ground-motive which was born out of the encounter of the culture-religion with the older religion of life.
     The modern Humanistic ground-motive of nature and freedom, which we shall presently subject to a detailed investigation in the transcendental criticism of Humanistic philosophy, has taken its rise from the religion of the free autonomous human personality and that of modern science evoked by it, and directed to the domination of nature. It is to be understood only against the background of the three ground-motives that formerly gave the central direction to Western thought, namely, the form-matter-motive, the motive of creation, fall and redemption, and the scholastic motive of nature and grace. The last-named motive was introduced by Roman-Catholicism and directed to a religious synthesis between the two former motives.
     It is not surprising, that the apostate main spring can manifest itself in divergent religious motives. For it never directs the attitude of life and thought to the true totality of meaning and the true radix of temporal reality, because this is not possible without the concentric direction to the true Origin.
     Idolatrous absolutizing is necessarily directed to the speciality of meaning, which is thereby dissociated from its temporal coherence, and consequently becomes meaningless and void. This is the deep truth in the time-honoured conception of the fall as a privatio, a deprivation of meaning, and as a negation, a nothingness.

Sin as privatio and as dynamis. No dialectical relation between creation and fall.

     However, the central dynamis of the spirit of apostasy is no "nothing"; it springs from the creation, and cannot become operative beyond the limits in which it is bound to the divine order of meaning. Only by virtue of the religious concentration impulse, which is concreated in the human heart, can the latter direct itself to idols. The dynamis of sin can unfold itself only in subjection to the religious concentration-law of human existence. Therefore, the apostle PAUL says, that without the law there is no sin and that there is a law of sin.
     Consequently, there can be no inner contradiction between creation and fall as long as they are understood in their Biblical sense. A contradiction would exist, if, and only if, sin were to have not merely an imaginary but a real power in itself, independent of creation.

The dialectical character of the apostate groundmotives. 

Religious and theoretic dialectic.

     On the contrary, it belongs to the inner nature of the idolatrous ground-motives, that they conceal in themselves a religious antithesis.
     For the absolutizing of special modal aspects of meaning, which in the nature of the case are relative, evokes the correlata of these latter. These correlata now in religious consciousness claim an absoluteness opposed to that of the deified aspects.
     This brings a religious dialectic into these basic motives, that is to say, they are in fact composed of two religious motives, which, as implacable opposites, drive human action and thought continually in opposite directions, from one pole to the other. I have subjected this religious dialectic to a detailed investigation in the first volume of my new trilogy, Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy. And I demonstrated, that this dialectic is quite different from the theoretical one which is inherent in the intentional antithetical gegenstand-relation of theoretic thought.
     For theoretical antithesis is by nature relative and requires a theoretical synthesis to be performed by the thinking "self". On the other hand, an antithesis in the religious starting-point of theoretical thought does not allow of a genuine synthesis. In the central religious sphere the antithesis necessarily assumes an absolute character, because no starting-point beyond the religious one is to be found from which a synthesis could he effectuated.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, p 60-64)