Dooyeweerd: 'Paper Decrees'

The Idea of the fulfilment of meaning in Christ undoubtedly implies that in the specific universality of each law-sphere the opening-process gives temporal expression to the full religious abundance of God's creation both on its law- and its subject-side. In this world, however, this sphere-universality cannot unfold itself perfectly in accordance with the guidance of the religious fulness of meaning. The development is affected by sin, otherwise the refraction of the fulness of meaning in time would no-where be experienced as disharmony. If there were no sin, the harmony among the law-spheres would be fully realized, just as in a perfect work of art. In such a work the 'natural' sides of the material are subjected to the guidance of the aesthetic structural function to such a degree that they no longer obtrude themselves as a disconcerting resistance. In their individual deepening of meaning and 'spiritualization', they are a pure expression of the artist's conception. Reality is, alas, different. The deification of the temporal meaning-aspects of the cosmos in apostate faith, expanded to free striving leadership, causes a fundamental disharmony in the opening-process.

In the previous chapter this disharmony was only considered in its modal historical sense. But we have now to examine it in the intermodal coherence of the different aspects of the process of meaning-disclosure.

If apostate faith gains the functional guidance in the opening-process, the subjection of the latter to the Divine world-order is not thereby cancelled. The Creator of Heaven and Earth maintains the functional-structural law-conformity in the disclosure of the temporal modal aspects against any human arbitrariness. If the Divine order in the temporal cosmos were not kept intact and elevated above any kind of human hubris, the manifestation of sin in time would not even be possible. For the whole of temporal reality would then burst like a soap-bubble. 

Does this mean that the effect of sin leaves the law-side of the creation entirely unaffected, and can only manifest itself on the side of the subject? But such a view would be at variance with the structure of the cosmic order analysed in an earlier part of this work. For in all the normative law-spheres the nomos [law] has been laid down only in the form of a principle. These Divine 'principia' have been left to human formation and positivizing in accordance with the modal structure of the law-spheres.

In the opening-process of the normative anticipatory spheres even the laws of the pre-logical aspects require this human intervention for their deepening of meaning. From the point of view of the structure of the temporal cosmos we can state that the disharmony in consequence of sin must necessarily also manifest itself on the law-side in the work of human formation and positivizing.

In this human interference the Divine structural principles are doubtless maintained and saved from human arbitrariness. Even the most impious law-maker or former of history can only form law or culture by the formation and positivizing of super-arbitrary principles founded in the order of creation (These principles are to be sharply distinguished from the subjective principles of political parties). The formal abolishing of paternal authority by the first wave of the French Revolution was one of the many 'paper decrees' which, as an expression of human hubris, were swept away by what is very inadequately termed the logic of the facts. By setting aside the normative principles of law, morality or culture, human arbitrariness can create a social chaos; it cannot create juridical, moral or historical norms in this way.

The human work of formation remains unshakably bound to the Divine structural principles of the normative law-spheres. But in this very work of formation and positivation the process of opening of the temporal meaning on the law-side cannot be carried out harmoniously, when in apostasy it has lost its direction to the religious fulness of meaning. Disharmony on the law-side is then inevitable, because the opening-process invariably moves in the direction of the absolutizing of certain meaning-moments.

It would be an illusion to think that this disharmony would not appear if the work of formation and positivation were only in the hands of Christians. For on the one hand, a Christian remains a thoroughly sinful creature, no better in himself than others. And on the other hand, the Christian former is bound to the history of mankind as a whole. In keeping with the entire structure of the Divine world-order, he cannot escape his historical position in a society in which the power of the civitas terrena is clearly revealed.

Within the opening-process of temporal meaning the position of genuine Christianity is one of restless struggle. In its temporary defeats and victories Christianity bears witness to the sinful broken state of its existence and that of the entire earthly creation; its position is only justified through faith in Christ. In Him the struggle for historical power in the opening-process may become a temporal blessing for a corrupted and broken world. The Christian Idea of the opening-process, guided by the faith in Christ as the Redeemer, cannot detach itself from sinful reality in an idealistic optimism. This Idea would then become false and worthless to temporal life. It must rather remain broken in character, in spite of its direction to the Root of reborn humanity, to Christ Jesus and to the Sovereign Creator, Who is willing to be our Father in Him. Only in its eschatological expectation of the ultimate full revelation of the Kingdom of God can Christian belief rise above this broken state without losing its relation to the sinful cosmos.  For the same reason the Idea of the universality of each of the aspects within its own sphere cannot be conceived in a purely eschatological sense; it should also be related to our sinful cosmos.

This Idea retains its normative transcendental direction to the consummation of meaning in Christ. But at the same time it should give us an insight into the disharmony that the process of disclosure shows in apostasy. Only in this way can we arrive at a satisfying conception of the Christian Idea of cultural development.

(Herman Dooyeweerd 1894-1977, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol 2, The General Theory of Modal Spheres, pp 335-337)