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| View from Hasliberg Reuti, Switzerland |
The
Epistemological Problem in the Light of the Cosmological Idea
The
perspective structure of the horizon of experience. The dependence of our
knowledge about the cosmos on our self-knowledge and on our knowledge of God.
The different levels
of the a priori we have discovered in
the structure of the horizon of human experience as the horizon of earthly
reality are not placed side by side in an arbitrary way.
They are integrated
into a perspective coherence in accordance with the Divine order of the
creation. In the order among them, and in their coherence, they form the
perspective in which we experience the cosmos.
All human experience,
both in the pre-theoretical and in the theoretical attitudes, is rooted in the
structure of the transcendent unity of self-consciousness. The latter partakes
in the religious root of the creation directed to God, or, in the case of
apostasy, directed away from God. This religious
horizon is the transcendent horizon of the selfhood, and encompasses the cosmic temporal horizon in which we
experience the insoluble coherence and the modal and typical refraction of meaning.
The temporal horizon encompasses and
determines the modal horizon both in its theoretical (analytical and
synthetical) distinction and in its pre-theoretical systasis. The temporal
horizon encompasses and determines also the plastic
horizon of the structures of individuality, which in its turn implies the
modal horizon.
From this it follows
that all temporal knowledge rests on a religious or pseudo-religious
foundation, and is restricted and made relative by the temporal dimensions of
the horizon of experience and of reality. For this reason we are the victims of
an illusion, if we hypostatize [absolutize/deify/idolize] the
structure of human knowledge, or proclaim the human cognitive apparatus
self-sufficient. For the transcendent horizon of the selfhood, radiating
through all human experience perspectively, has no rest in itself, but only
exists in the creaturely mode of meaning,
which is nothing in itself, i.e. nothing apart from its reference to the
Origin.
The religious
meaning of the created world binds the true knowledge of the cosmos to true
self-knowledge, and the latter to the true knowledge of God (1) .
______________________
(1) This
is the radical difference between the Christian view of self-knowledge as the
condition of a radical critical knowledge of the world and HUSSERL'S
transcendental phenomenological egology. The latter makes the knowledge of God
dependent on the phenomenological self-interpretation of the transcendental
ego.
______________________
This view has
been explained in an unsurpassable and pregnant way in the first chapter of the
first book of CALVIN'S Institutio. It
is the only purely Biblical view and the alpha and omega of any truly Christian
epistemology. Theoretical truth, limited and relativized by the temporal
horizon, is in every respect dependent on the full super-temporal Truth. If we
hypostatize theoretical truth, it is turned into a lie. For there does not
exist a self-sufficient partial truth. We cannot
truthfully know the cosmos outside of the true knowledge of God. But like
all human experience in this earthly dispensation, our knowledge of God,
although directed to the absolute Truth, is also restricted and relativized by (but not at all to) our temporal cosmic existence.
The restriction of our human experience of the religious
fulness of meaning by time is no
restriction to time.
This means that in
the Christian experience the religious fulness of meaning remains bound up with
temporal reality. Every spiritualistic view which wants to separate
self-knowledge and the knowledge of God from all that is temporal, runs counter
to the Divine order of the creation. Such spiritualism inevitably leads to an
internally empty idealism, or to a confused kind of mysticism, in spite of its
own will or intentions.
In the order of this
life — that
of the life beyond is still hidden from us as to its positive nature — all human experience remains
bound to a perspective horizon in which the transcendent light of eternity must
force its way through time. In this horizon we become aware of the transcendent
fulness of the meaning of this life only in the light of the Divine revelation
refracted through the prism of time. For this reason Christ, as the fulness of
God's Revelation, came into the flesh;
and for this reason also the Divine Word-revelation came to us in the temporal
garb of human language.
But if our experience
were limited to our temporal functions of consciousness, or rather to an abstractum taken from our temporal
complex of experiential functions, as is taught by the critical and the
positivistic epistemologies, it would be impossible to have true knowledge of
God, or of ourselves, or of the cosmos. And in the apostasy in which falsehood
(and not truth) rules, we have no such knowledge. This also applies to the πρώτον ψεύδος [prōton pseudos, first false step] in which the entire
epistemology of immanence-philosophy is founded. For it is based on the
self-destructive hypostatizing of the theoretical synthesis of meaning, and on
a fundamental misconception of the structure of human experience. In the
transcendent religious subjective a priori of the cosmic self-consciousness the whole of human cognition is
directed either to the absoluteTruth, or to the spirit of falsehood. In this
cosmic self-consciousness we are aware of temporal cosmic reality being related
to the structure of the human selfhood qua talis.
In its universally
valid law-conformity this structure is essentially the structure of a religious
community into which the individual ego has been integrated. Any theoretical
displacement of the human selfhood from this central position in experience is
due to the lack of a radical philosophical self-reflexion.
But man cannot attain to true self-knowledge
without true knowledge of God, which cannot be gained outside of the Divine
Revelation in Christ.
At this point, many a
reader who has taken the trouble to follow our argument will perhaps turn away
annoyed. He will ask: Must epistemology end in a Christian sermon or in a
dogmatic statement? I can only answer by means of the question as to whether
the dogmatic statement with which the supposed autonomous epistemology opens,
viz. the proclamation of the self-sufficiency of the human cognitive functions,
has a better claim to our confidence as far as epistemology is concerned.
Our philosophy makes
bold to accept the "stumbling block of the cross of Christ" as the
corner stone of epistemology (Cf. 1
Corinthians 1-23. The Twentieth Century New Testament has: obstacle).
And thus it also
accepts the cross of scandal, neglect and dogmatic rejection. In the limitation and weakness of the flesh, we grasp
the absolute truth in our knowledge of God derived from His revelation, in
prayer and worship. This knowledge in the full sense of the word contains the
religious principle and foundation of all true knowledge, and primarily has a
religious enstatic character. It no
more rests primarily on a theoretical meaning-synthesis than does the cosmic
self-consciousness.
The knowledge about
God in which religious self-knowledge is implied, is not primarily gained in a
so-called theological way. That which is very inadequately called
"theology", is a theoretical knowledge obtained in a synthesis of the
logical function of thought and the temporal function of faith. It is a
knowledge which itself is entirely dependent on the cosmonomic Idea from which
the thinker starts. The true knowledge of God and of our-selves is concerned
with the horizon of human experience and therefore also with that of
theoretical knowledge. It rests on our trustful acceptance of Divine revelation
in the indissoluble unity of both its cosmic-immanent sense and its
transcendent-religious meaning; an acceptance with our full personality and
with all our heart. It means a turning of the personality, a giving of life in
the full sense of the word, a restoring of the
subjective perspective of our experience, enabling us to grasp reality
again perspectively in the light of Truth. This does not mean a kind of
mystical supernatural cognitive function, but it refers to the horizon that God
made for human experience in the cosmic order created by Him. The subjective
perspective has been obfuscated by sin and distorted and closed to the light of
the Divine Revelation.
True self-knowledge
opens our eyes to the radical corruption of fallen man, to the radical lie
which has caused his spiritual death. It therefore leads to a complete
surrender to Him Who is the new root of mankind, and Who overcame death through
his sufferings and death on the cross. In Christ's human nature our heavenly
Father has revealed the fulness of meaning of all creation (Ephes 1:10), and
through Him according to His Divine nature, God created all things as through
the Word of his power (Heb 1:2, 3).
The primary lie
obfuscating the horizon of human experience is the rebellious thought that man
could do without this knowledge of God and of himself in any field of
knowledge, and could find the ultimate criterion of truth in 'autonomous', i.e.
absolutized theoretical thought.
The law-conformable structure of human experience in the
transcendent horizon is originally a law of freedom.
The law-conformity of
the structure of the horizon of human experience was maintained after the fall
into sin, but the rebellious selfhood can no longer of itself acquire an
insight into this structure. It supposes it can create the horizon of its
experience from its own resources and has abused its religious freedom and delivered itself up to the
bondage of darkness.
For the
law-conformable structure of human experience, according to its transcendent dimension, is a law of freedom, which in its fulness of meaning determines all
temporal dimensions of the horizon of experience.
When this fulness of
human freedom was lost subjectively, through the fall into sin, the human
selfhood fell away into the temporal horizon.
In so far as it still
sought for a fixed point of support, the human selfhood tried to hypostatize an
abstract part of the temporal horizon to a transcendence that lacks the
character of meaning.This is also the
apostasy from the fulness of meaning of the Truth that alone makes all temporal
truth possible.
The standing in the Truth as freedom in the transcendent
horizon of experience.
Christ as the fulness
of God's Revelation is the Truth. Standing in the Truth, as the sharing in the
fulness of meaning of the cosmos in Christ, is the indispensable prerequisite
for the insight into the full horizon of our experience.
This means that we
have once and for all given up the illusion of possessing the norm of truth in
our own fallen selfhood. We have arrived at the self-knowledge that outside of
the light of Divine Revelation we stand in falsehood.
Any one who grasps
this Divine Revelation with all his heart abides in the Truth. Abiding in the
Truth frees our insight into the horizon of human experience from the
prejudices of immanence-philosophy, and it also enables theoretical knowledge
to be directed to the Truth. At the same time it cuts off at the root the
overestimation of synthetic scientific knowledge, which remains bound within
the temporal horizon.
(Herman
Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical
Thought, Vol 2, pp 560-564)
