“At great turning-points of world-history, man’s
historical consciousness is strongly aroused. The relativity of our traditional
measures and opinions manifests itself in a clear way. At these historical
turning points those who do not live by the Word of God and who had considered
these traditional measures and opinions to be the firm ground of their personal
and societal life, easily fall prey to a state of spiritual uprooting, in which
they surrender themselves to a radical relativism, which has lost all faith in
an absolute truth.”
(‘In the Twilight of Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought’ by Herman Dooyeweerd, Paideia Press 2012, Series B, Volume 4, p 45)
My big brother Fearghas (artist, Gaelic poet, published author etc.) sent me the above quote. Fearghas has been a student of Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) for many years and the lines of his thought (as clearly evidenced below) are very indebted to his writings. His blog is found at: Mouse in a Glass: Luch sa Ghlainne (mouseglass.blogspot.com)
We interacted as follows:
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| Fearghas & Neil |
NEIL: I like the Dooyeweerd quote. He mentions that “…those
who do not live by the Word of God … easily fall prey to a state of spiritual
uprooting…”
I suppose Jesus’s Parable of the Sower (with the seeds
and soils) applies here. So, it’s all about God’s Word taking deep root in the soil
of Holy Spirit-prepared hearts.
As we say, the sword of Lord (which is the Word of God) is our best defence – against all would-be invaders of God’s Garden. For, Satan, our enemy, likes to sow weeds amongst God’s crops. The sword of the Lord is the ploughshare by which we cut down both the wheat and the tares. God harvests the former for His Kingdom and the latter for His Furnace. We are merely labourers in His fields.
Inside the Kingdom the subtle Serpent attempts to
uproot the Word from hearts or at least stunt growth and outside he seeks to
prevent the seed of the Word from being sown, by making sure the ground remains stoney and always in the shadows.
A blunderbuss is needed to scare away and even blast
garden pests, and I think Rudi and I have succeeded in this area. Metaphorically
speaking, (like the “Glorious Twelfth” in Scotland!), we had a field day blasting
every wind of doctrine that winged our way.
To slightly change the metaphor, Satan has
Christianity running-ragged as Christians tilt their lances at every windmill.
Evil seems to be ubiquitous, popping up its ugly head in, eg restaurants, movie
theatres, doctors’ offices, Xray Clinics, hospitals, kindergartens, public libraries, colleges, schools,
universities, retail stores, beer!, the White House, yes, even churches!
However, I wonder if there is a target that we could
aim our large calibre high velocity weapons of spiritual warfare at (perhaps in
a future book). What/where is the heart of the matter? David struck Goliath
directly on his forehead. I feel as if we Christians are fighting on too many
fronts at the moment (from Darwinism to Dispensationalism, from Socialism to
Secularism, Arminianism to Wokeism, Premillennialism to Postmodernism, basic
Socialism to Cultural Marxism etc.).
Dooyeweerd points directly at the heart of the matter:
too many Christians are NOT living by the Word of God. The question then is, as
Francis Schaeffer puts it in his book title “How Should We Then Live?” In
other words, how should we glorify God and enjoy Him forever?
I know I’ve sort of answered my own question here, but what do you think Fearghas? How do we convince Christians to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God?
FEARGHAS: Humanism is in crisis. It is currently shifting from its classical objectivistic mechanistic rationalistic polarity (which presupposes the abiding normative laws of mathematics and physics — a clockwork UNI-verse model, if you like), to its post-postmodernist subjectivistic irrationalistic personalistic polarity (ie radically rejecting all normativity as it sinks into a black-hole of infinite flux — a haywire MULTI-verse model of alternative cosmic realities, if you like — see (with visual health warning) the recent Oscar-winning Michelle Yeoh movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’), but also the dissolution of human normativity into potentially non-regulated acid-baths of experimental bio-engineering, transhumanism, and AI consciousness. The ultra-relativism of the latter subjectivistic polarity infamously rejects for instance the normative laws of biology in regards to the trans debate, but it rejects also the normative laws of speech and civilised discourse which undergird the negotiated social peace upon which democracy is premised — hence its modus operandi presents (counter-intuitively perhaps) as strident intransigence, governmental absolutism, raw mob power, infantilised hysteria, all symbolised by the iconic weapon of baby-pink-and-blue-painted baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire.
The objectivist rationalist polarity of humanism was a
hugely pernicious and resolute opponent of Christ and His Word, giving rise to
so-called Higher Criticism and to the moral blankness of mechanistic
selfish-gene High Darwinism. All of which as we know have presented relentless
challenges to Biblical accounts of the miraculous, but above all to the
substitutionary death and resurrection of Christ.
The new beast from the sea, however, manifests in its
subjectivism as a shape-shifting, obsessively personalistic, ultra-relativistic
tyrant. Our retaliation would seem to require renewed focus on the incarnation
of Christ, of course along with his sacrificial death, resurrection and
ascension — his embodiment in birth, in resurrection and in ascension providing
the definitive endorsement of human and creational normativity. He is the True
Man. He is the Last Adam. We are made in his likeness, in the image of God.
There does not exist an infinity of conflicting variations of my or your
selfhood populating endless random universes. THIS cosmos is all there is, and
we are the stewards of it. This cosmos is from him through him and to him. He
upholds all things by his word of power. He reconciles all things in heaven and
earth by the blood of his cross. This whole creation groans in travail as it
waits for that day, the redemption of our bodies, being a new creation which in
some deep sense will yet be a continuation of this one, as our resurrected
bodies will have unfathomable continuity with our present bodies.
This cosmos fell with the First Adam and is rescued by
the Last Adam. We must emphasise all the more the structural norms of this
creation (eg binary maleness-femaleness, eg the family unit optimally being
comprised of mother, father, and progeny, eg the integrity of animals “according
to their kinds”) — but also the exhaustive structural frameworks which comprise
temporal reality in its totality, these are the concrete ordinances of the
Lord, as the psalmist tells us. God’s creational ordinances have not as such
fallen with man. They have not as such been corrupted by sin. God’s creational
laws remain transcendently intact. Only the heart of Man has fallen, in its
daily rebellion rejecting the pristine given-ness of God’s creational order,
and in arrogant delusion attempting to level it all to dust and to rebuild it
from scratch in the image of apostate humanity.
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