DEEP CALLS TO DEEP
ADOLPH SAPHIR AND HERMAN DOOYEWEERD
(3) Abstraction & The Offence of the Cross
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Adolph Saphir writes
('Christ and the Scriptures', 1864):
"[…] Most of the divergences from scriptural truth in our days have their origin in the attempt to translate Shemitic ideas into Japhetic language, or to interpret the doctrine of the apostles, not according to Moses and the prophets, but according to philosophy.
"[…] A strict analysis of the teaching of this school shows that we have here a more serious and important change than the substitution of a vague, metaphysical terminology for the concrete and simple words of Scripture. Here is a radical subversion of Bible teaching, eliminating its supernatural character, and thereby destroying its simplicity and power. Thus, the doctrine of substitution, the peculiar importance assigned to the blood in connection with expiation, both in the law of Moses and throughout the apostolic writings, is especially repugnant to the Japhetic European mode of thought. Translated into our philosophical language, what remains of the “offence of the Cross” — that Cross which is the power of God?
"[…] We have nowadays a popular Christianity; and we know that the Gospel is not popular, but an offence to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks.”
(Adolph Saphir, 'Christ and the Scriptures' pp 60, 150-153)
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Herman Dooyeweerd writes:
('A New Critique of Theoretical Thought', 1969):
"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 (1 Cor 1:23). 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.
"[...] 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 (1 Ephes 1:10), and through Him according to His Divine nature, God created all things as through the Word of his power (2 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."
(Herman Dooyeweerd, "New Critique of Theoretical Thought" Vol II pp 562-563)
(The Essence of Christianity by Herman Dooyeweerd, 1942):
"[...] To talk about the essence of Christianity is especially meaningful in our day. Many people barely know what the Christian religion really stands for. That is because of the many caricatures that Christianity has undergone over the centuries. Mankind has always been out to escape its radical claims by adjusting and accommodating it to the religious ground-motives that first governed Greco-Roman civilization and later modern humanistic culture.
Those attempts at accommodation first saw Greek philosophy wrap itself like a parasite around the Christian tenets of faith. In modern times it has been Humanism’s religion of reason and personality that has undermined Christian beliefs by interpreting them in a humanistic spirit. In the eyes of many, the essence of Christianity was reduced to a doctrine of morality: the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man based on the rational belief in God, virtue and immortality. Christ was recognized only as the ideal man, the exalted example of virtue and self-sacrifice.
[...] God loved the world He created with His perfect divine love. Man, who according to his divine calling and freedom was to dedicate the entire temporal creation to the glory of God, has corrupted this work of creation in its very root.
God revealed His unfathomable love for us by sending into this world His Son—the eternal Word by whom all things were created—to suffer the eternal punishment for sin in our place. That is to say, God Himself, in the person of Christ Jesus, took upon Himself the shame and curse of the guilt of our sin. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
The whole life of Christ, from His birth to His death on the cross, was one road of sorrow and suffering. But He loved His own to the end. In the terrific battle with Satan He won the decisive victory. He brought about a radical redemption because He transformed the creation in its religious root and restored the communion of love with God.
Christ Jesus has said: 'I am the way, the truth and the life.'
He is the Way. There is no other way to God than through Christ Jesus, because the radical guilt of sin cannot be removed except through an equally radical divine sacrifice.
He is the Truth. Christ Jesus, and He alone, could say this of Himself. He exposed all lies, all hypocrisy, all duplicity. He entered the homes of the despised, the lepers, the pariahs, and spoke the truth to them, full of love and compassion. He showed them that they were utterly lost. They had to embrace Him with both arms if they wanted to be saved. The orthodox Pharisees could tolerate the blinding light of truth as little as the learned Greek philosophers. This gospel was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. But it was the only way out of death, unto life.
Christ is the Life. He became life for us because, moved by boundless love for sinners, he voluntarily suffered eternal spiritual death on our behalf.
After His excruciating pain on Gethsemane and Golgotha, and after three days in the silent tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, there followed the divine denouement of the world drama that had been set in motion by the fall into sin of the human race.
“Christ ist erstanden,Aus der Verwesung Schoß.Reißet von BandenFreudig euch los!”
[“Christ is arisenRedeemed from decayThe bonds that imprisonYour souls, rend away!”](lines from Goethe’s Faust).
Through Christ’s resurrection, the life of the reborn creation arises from death.
This is God’s truth; it is not a figment of the religious imagination. For Christ lives in all eternity. He works every day, even in the horrendous catastrophe of our time [1942, World War 2]. These horrific days, in which the world is in flames from North to South and from East to West, were foretold by Christ.
All these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
They must come to pass. They are signs of the times. The pervasiveness of sin is death in a thousand shapes and forms.
But Christ watches and prays to His Father who is in heaven. For those who believe in him, the end is the triumph of His Kingdom.
For it is only in appearance that the powerful of the world play an autonomous role in the course of events. God smites and chastises the world because it continues to reject Him and thinks it can do without Him.
But for those who are hid in Christ the temporary trials and threats of death are nothing compared to the eternal bliss that will be revealed to them. In the words of Paul:
“I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate me from the love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(The Essence of Christianity by Herman Dooyeweerd, 1942. Translated by Harry Van Dyke.)
(Herman Dooyeweerd:
‘Sin and the dialectical conception of guilt
in Greek and Humanistic philosophy.’):
In its revelation of the fall, however, just like in that of creation, the Word of God penetrates to the root, to the religious [ultimate, supratemporal] centre of human nature.
The fall is the apostasy of this centre, of this radix of existence, it is the falling away from God. This was spiritual death, because it is the apostasy from the absolute source of Life. Consequently the fall was radical. It involved the whole temporal cosmos, since the latter had its religious [ultimate, supratemporal] root only in mankind. Every conception which denies this radical [radix] sense of the fall, (even though it uses the term "radical" as in KANT'S conception of the "radical evil" in man), is diametrically opposed to the basic motive of Holy Scripture. Since, as we have seen, the revelation of the fall does not in any way mean the recognition of an antithetic principle of origin which is opposed to the Creator, sin cannot be thought of as standing in a dialectical relation to the creation.
And because of the radical character of sin, redemption in Christ Jesus must also be radical.
The Divine Word, through which, according to the pronouncement of John's gospel, all things were made, became flesh in Jesus Christ. The Word has entered into the root and the temporal ramifications, in body and soul, of human nature. And therefore it has brought about a radical [ie involving all temporal reality and physicality] redemption. Sin is not dialectically reconciled, but it is really propitiated. And in Christ as the new root of the human race, the whole temporal cosmos, which was religiously [ie in ultimate, supratemporal “radix”] concentrated in man, is in principle again directed toward God and thereby wrested free from the power of Satan.
However, until the return of Christ, even humanity which is renewed in Him still shares in the apostate root of mankind. Consequently, the struggle of the Kingdom of God continues to be waged against the kingdom of darkness until the "consommatio saeculi" [“consummation of the ages”].
(Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 175)
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