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| Abhainn Nis, Geamhradh, (Foto le F. MacFhionnlaigh) |
In this attitude the experiencing I-ness is necessarily in the I-we relation of the Christian community and in the we-Thou relation with God, Who has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus. This is why this naive experiential attitude cannot be uninterested and impersonal.
This should not be misunderstood. It would be an illusion to suppose that a true Christian always displays this Biblical attitude in his pre-theoretical experience. Far from it. Because he is not exempt from the solidarity of the fall into sin, every Christian knows the emptiness of an experience of the temporal world which seems to be shut up in itself. He knows the impersonal attitude of a 'Man'* in the routine of common life, and the dread of nothingness, the meaningless, if he tries to find himself again in a so-called existential isolation. He is acquainted with all this from personal experience, though he does not understand the philosophical analysis of this state of spiritual uprooting in Humanistic existentialism.
But the Christian whose heart is opened to the Divine Word-revelation knows that in this apostate experiential attitude he does not experience temporal things and events as they really are. i.e. as meaning pointing beyond and above itself to the true religious centre of meaning and to the true Origin.” (Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, III, p29)
*i.e. one like many; cf. Existence and Being by Martin Heidegger (Vision Press Ltd, London, 1949), p. 45.
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