Dooyeweerd's philosophy for Reformed believers
INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE AND AUDIO BY GREGORY BAUS
The slogan of The Herman Dooyeweerd Society is “Dooyeweerd’s philosophy for Reformed believers.” The general aim of the Society is to promote greater understanding and appreciation of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy among all who are capable. However, it is envisioned that the Society’s membership will consist of, and its efforts will be directed to, particularly orthodox, confessionally Reformed Christians. The following addresses the question of how the need arose for the promotion of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy among Reformed believers in particular.
The so-called Second Great Awakening in the first half of the 1800s, primarily in the U.S., was a popular movement of increased religious fervor of a sort that is largely at odds with Reformed faith and practice. However, around this same period, in various parts of Europe (including Switzerland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scotland) many rediscovered Reformed Christianity after the prior century of so-called Enlightenment secularization. This renewal of the Reformed Faith, commonly known as the Réveil /reh-VEY/, significantly influenced Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and others in the Netherlands. It was especially Kuyper’s elaboration and development of Calvinism not only as an ecclesial and theological system, but more extensively as a religious worldview that reflects an understanding of reality as a whole, including common cultural life outside the institutional church, that came to be known as Neo-Calvinism.
Such Neo-Calvinism that included commitment to the orthodox, confessionally Reformed Faith was the context for Dooyeweerd’s development of his philosophy. This philosophy was initially characterized as “Calvinistic” philosophy. This was in keeping not only with Dooyeweerd’s own confessional affirmation of the Three Forms of Unity (viz, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort), to which he strictly subscribed without exception or scruple (or so-called ‘gravamen’), but also in keeping with the Reformed religious foundation he recognized as the only possible basis for the sort of philosophy he sought to articulate. While confessional fidelity was gradually abandoned after WWII in the denomination Kuyper helped establish, of which Dooyeweerd was a member, Dooyeweerd himself never compromised his confessional adherence.
Nevertheless, following WWII Dooyeweerd expressed his concern that the label “Calvinistic” would give the false impression that his philosophy was not actually Christian philosophy in a truly catholic or orthodox ecumenical sense. Dooyeweerd did not want to give the impression that his philosophy was only of use or possible interest to members of a particular denomination, even if that denomination was the most faithful one currently existing. Contrary to the opinions of some, Dooyeweerd was not mitigating his Calvinistic, Neo-Calvinistic, or Reformed convictions, nor mitigating their foundational import for his philosophy. In fact, quite the opposite of that, Dooyeweerd was emphasizing that Reformed religious commitments are not sectarian, but are rather biblical Christian convictions. This fact, however, has been largely ignored.
The fact that many who claimed to represent Dooyeweerd’s philosophy abandoned the confessionally Reformed Faith, with other factors, resulted in, at least among many Reformed believers in North America, Dooyeweerd’s philosophy obtaining the erroneous reputation of being at odds with the Reformed Faith¹. But Dooyeweerd firmly held that a truly Christian philosophy, at root, could only be developed in line with Calvin’s biblically Reformed religious starting-point. Calvin is highlighted not as a special saint above mere men, but as someone who we recognize as having articulated a specific biblical view.
Such a starting-point is one that, among other things, humbly embraces a Reformed understanding of the Scripturally-revealed proper boundary between the Creator and the creation, radical corruption of human nature, and heart regeneration of those in Christ. And Dooyeweerd holds that the Reformed view of these things is fundamentally at odds with non-Reformed views (such as “Christianized” Aristotelianism or “Christianized” Kantianism, etc) even when those other views are intended to be compatible with Christian faith and are held by sincere Christians.
Dooyeweerd affirms the competence of the church regarding the confession, and addresses possible conflicts, yet the important distinction, between academic scholarship² and the church’s non-academic articles of faith.
” [There are] dangers that threaten Christian doctrine from philosophy or [academic] theology which, while intending to base themselves on a Christian standpoint, nevertheless fall into errors that violate the confession of the church at fundamental points. Indeed, the Christian church has always been compelled to formulate and elaborate its [confessional articles of faith] ever more sharply, precisely in its battle against such heresies, and in this it has always found the help of [academic] theology indispensable. Such reasoning, of course, is entirely correct.
…[Assuming the confession’s subordination to Scripture,] a departure from the [Reformed] confession can, by its very nature, never be anything but a departure from the truths of the Christian religion, truths that are revealed in God’s Word and that must be upheld by the church in its own sphere of doctrinal authority. An unscriptural attack against the [Reformed] confession could be launched in the form [of some academic field or other], and this [academic specific] form naturally should not stop the church from rejecting real errors in matters of faith. For in doing so [the church] remains entirely within its material sphere of competence.
Since the church then takes up “formal” contact with [various academic fields], it might not always be able to avoid making a [scholarly academic-] theological formulation both of its own standpoint and of that of the errors it rejects, insofar as this is necessary for a proper understanding of the matter….
[However,] a real departure from the [Reformed] confession only exists if an article of faith that has been given explicit form in the confession is violated materially. [Normatively,] in a material sense the [non-academic] confession [of our Reformed Faith], on the one hand, and [academic] theological and philosophical [scholarship], on the other, remain strictly distinct across the board, however closely they might be intertwined in a formal sense.
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NOTES
1. Another major factor (or composite of factors) was that many students or appreciators of the views of Cornelius Van Til followed him in several errors concerning Dooyeweerd’s views. First, they seemed to mistake Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique of theoretical thought for an attempted and inadequate apologetic for the Christian Faith. And second, they mistook the proximate starting-point (viz, the undeniably abstractive character of theorizing) in Dooyeweerd’s second or revised formulation of transcendental argument for his ultimate starting-point (viz, the Truth of Scriptural revelation). More than these two errors, and unlike Van Til who continued as a general proponent of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, many took these erroneous criticisms as reason enough to also dismiss the rest of his philosophy. And further, again unlike Van Til, many uncritically dismissed Dooyeweerd’s philosophy wholesale for unwarranted biblicistic reasons, whether theonomic (such as Greg Bahnsen) or tri-perspectivalist (such as John Frame). This “Vantillian” factor contributing to the widespread ignoring of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy among Reformed believers will be explored in another essay.
2. Dooyeweerd uses the term “science,” inclusive of all academic fields, not only “natural sciences,” but I have substituted “academic,” and added other clarifying terms in brackets.
Gregory Baus.
