Volume 2 Number 2 Article 3

December 1973

Dooyeweerd's "History" and the Historian Dooyeweerd's "History" and the Historian

Nick Van Til Dordt College

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Van Til, Nick (1973) "Dooyeweerd's "History" and the Historian," Pro Rege: Vol. 2: No. 2, 7 - 15. Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol2/iss2/3

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by Nick Van TilProfessor of Philosophy

Mr. Van Til peceived his A.B.fPOm Calvin College. Subsequent tomilitary sepvice in Wopld War II hespent a semestep at Westminstep Theo-logical SeminaPY in the study ofApologetics. Thepeaftep he peceivedM.A. degpees fpom the Univepsity ofMichigan in both history and phi lo-sophy and follO1,)ed fupthep gpaduatestudies in philosophy at MichiganState Univepsity.

Mr. Van Til is a chaptep membepof the Dopdt College faculty. Heteaches in the departments of philo-sophy and histopy; holds the ronk ofFrofessop of Philosophy; and sepvesas the chairman of the Theology-

Philosophy department.

It has been my observatian that many who

are busy with hi story as their academi c profes-

sion seem opposed to Dooyeweerd's approach to

history. This maybe due in part to the fact thatthey have not sufficiently sought to understand

Dooyeweerd. However, it seems to me that it is

more particularly because what Dooyeweerd dis-

cusses as history is not the same as what the his-

torians are discussing as history. This is h"ue

quite specifically when both begin to speakabout "law" in history, or when they begin to

ask, Can one posit some specific laws for history?When an historian attempts to locate some

laws for history, he generally looks to the pastto see if any pattern has emerged which he can

expect to repeat itself in the future 'Nith such

regularity that he can depend on it and can use

it to make predictions. This is the basis for lawin the so-called "exact" sciences such as physics

and chemi stry. Noti ng that there is not that kindofregularity of pattern in history and conc ludingthat history does not repeat itself, many studentsof history conclude that we have to abandon theidea of law in history and that we have to there-with abandon the idea that history is a science,at least in the narrower sense which is requiredby the demands of prediction expected and ob-tained in the "exact" or positive sciences.

Failing to find any predictive basis for thefuture in the study of past events, at least forexact prediction, the Christian historian turns tothe Scriptures and makes some statements whichhe believes are valid on the basis of the credit-ability of the Scriptures themselves. He knowsthat God is a covenant-keepi ng God. He knowsand expects some kinds of conclusions on thebasis of sacred history. God wi II not go backon his promises to his people. Christ will return

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in due time and there will be a judgment and asubsequent separation of the "City of God" andthe "City of the World." There is an antithesiswhich runs through history, though it is not man'sbusiness to sort out the sheep from the goats inthe process of time. Beyond some of these broadoutlines, the historian in the Reformed and Amil-lenial position does not attempt to delineate thefuture with a fi ne-poi nted pen. He is satisfiedwith a Biblical eschatology broadly construed.

For Dooyeweerd (if I understand him cor-rectly) laws for history along with every otherlaw in creation are imbedded in the total schemeof Cosmonomic Law, which is the touchstone ofDooyeweerd's phi losophy. Dooyeweerd insiststhat the Bible does not provide us with phi losoph-ical ideas, anymore than it gives us natural sci-entific knowledge or economic or legal theory.But the "states of affairs" presenting themselveswithin the temporal order of our experience areof a dynamic meaning-character, that is, theyrefer outside and above themselves to the univer-sal meaning-context in time, to the creaturelyunity of root and to the absolute Origin of allmeani ng.1 (Origi n here refers to God as Crea-

tor.)

II Dooyeweerd insists that theBible does not provide uswith philosophical ideas,anymore than it gives us nat-ural scientific knowledge oreconomic or legal theory. II

In elaborating his position Dooyeweerdenumerates a vari ety of modes or aspects of ex-perience. Each of these exhibits its own lawsand is sovereign in its own sphere. These aspectsor modalities include number, space, energy,motion, life, feeling, analysis, history, lan-guage, the social, economics, aesthetics, law(jurisprudence), ethics, and pistics (faith). Eachmodality anticipates the one above it in thescale, and each above has a reciproclJl relationto the ones which precede it. Created entitiesalso participate in these ~pects as acting sub-jectsaccording totheir complexity. Man is anacting subject in all aspects from the numericalto the pistical (faith) aspect.

Those who are acquainted with Kant's"forms of intuition" and "categories of thought"will recognize some similarities between whatKant was tryi ng to do and what Dooyeweerd hasdone. There is, however, this basic distinction:Kant suggested that man created "reality" forhimself by the use of the forms of intuition andthe categori es of thought, whi Ie Dooyeweerdinsists that these modalities are inherent in theorder of creation and have norms which are notamenable to subjective manipulation. In fact,it is this inherent objectivity which makes itpossible for the Christian and the non-Christianto say similar things about shared "states ofaffairs." While granting the non-manipulatorynature of the various modal aspects, one mightargue against Dooyeweerd by suggesting thateveryone approaches the common "states ofaffairs" with a particular religious bias whichwi II distort the conc lusions reached concerningthe "states of affairs. ,,3

Students of Kant wi II also have noticedthat ~is missing in the above listing of themodal aspects of reality. Where does it fit in?For Dooyeweerd, "cosmic time overarches thedifferent aspects as order, and streams throughtheir boundaries as duration. ,,4 The continuity

of time is not exhausted by any single specificaspect of meaning. Therefore, this continuitycannot be comprehended in any concept but canonly be approximately apprehended in a tran-

scendenta I Id ea. Here Dooyeweerd apparent Iytakes his cue from Henri Bergson who arguedthat concepts artificially cut up time like aseries of photographi c slides that do not give usthe feeling of duration or action which is pos-

Dooyeweerd cautions us against coming tohasty conclusions in our theoretic explanation ofthe "states of affairs" as we experience them andtry to explain them. He suggests, "I considerit a critical requirement to suspend our phi losoph-ical interpretation of the 'states of affairs' atissue unti I we have so many of them at our dis-posal, relating to all the modal aspects of ourtemporal experiential world which until now wehave learned to distinguish, that we can try toconceive them in a philosophical total view. ,,2

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sib Ie with the movi e camera. This approach totime by Dooyeweerd not only approximatesBergson's Intuitionism but also forms part ofDooyeweerd's objections to conceptionaliza-tion of revelation when he argues that to think ofBiblical revelation in conceptual terms is tolapse into rationalism.

For Dooyeweerd, nothing created is self-sufficient. Everything points beyond itself tothe other aspects of reality. God alone givesmeaning to the parts and to the whole. Dooye-weerd so emphasizes this concept that he refuses.to give the status of being to any created enti-ties. They stand only as "meaning" in relationto God as Being. God is the Transcendent, thesource of all creation. He is the transcendentCI priori of all philosophical or scientific activ-ity. But forming a counterpart of this view isthe strategic assumption that God operatesthrough cosmic time and that the fulness ofmeaning of creation is refracted by time's lim-itationsin much the same way that white lightis refracted by a prism into a spectrum of color.5

Those who are critical of Dooyeweerd atvarious points, including myself, feel that inhis notion of time Dooyeweerd is assigning to

up time into discernable and separately exper-ienced entities of duration. Dooyeweerd seemsto have a feeling for this cutting up of timewhen he says, "If I hasten to my work and lookat my watch, then time has for me not only anabstract aspect of movement, but I experienceit in the conti nuous coherence of its aspectsof number, space and movement, with thestream of organic life, duration of feeling andthe normative social aspects.,,6

From the last four paragraphs we shouldbe ready to conclude that time is not of theessence when it comes to Dooyeweerd's viewof the laws of history. To be sure, what goeson "historically" will happen under the over-arching canopy of cosmi c time; but history wi IInot be a record of past events in time, but willfit into the modality structure as indicatedabove. It stands between the ana Iyti c andthe lingual aspects of man's experience ofthose modes of the created order. To get atthe idea of history, we must now move on todiscover the nuclear moment or the identifyingcharacteristic of the historical modality. Eachmodality has such a nuclear moment or iden-tifying characteristic, according to Dooye-

weerd. This distinguishes it from every othersphere, gives it its sovereign rights, and places

it in its order amongst the modalities or aspects.We are now at the point where the basic

confusion arises between Dooyeweerd's idea

of history and the more generally accepted

ideas of history, both secular and Christian.The confusion arises because, to my mind,

Dooyeweerd at this point plays semantic trickson us that he should have anticipated andavoided. The nuclear moment or basic char-acteristic afthe historical modality is distin-

it a function which it does not perform. Infact, it is my opi nion that he has the processreversed. Instead of time refracting the orderedcreation into distinguishable entities, it is thevarious experiences of the various aspects thatbreak up the duration of time which otherwisewould'be like an indistinguishable flow.

Van Riessen, also a professor at the FreeUniversity, fee Is that the experience of thephysical breaks up time. Stoker of the Uni-versity of Potchefstroom, South Afri co, suggeststhat it is the succession of events that breaks

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guished from other kinds of formi ng as, for exam-ple, the spider making a web which it does byinstinct. Because man has analytical abilities,he alone has cultural abi lities. Dooyeweerd sug-gests that the cultural mode of formation revealsitself in two directions which are closely con-nected with each other. On the one hand, it isa formative power over persons unfolding itselfby giving cultural form to their social existence;on the other, it appears as a controlling mannerof sharing natural things or materials to culturalends.?

beyond history for the meaning of events, but itis not true that anyone who does not limit theconcept of history to the confines of Dooye-weerd's historical modality by so much denies thatthere is a transcendent context for history, whi chcontext can be the Creator God of the Scriptures.In other words, history does not have to be fittedinto the Cosmonomic Law scheme in a modalitystructure in order finallyor perhaps more imme-diatelyto relate for meaning to its Origin, to useDooyeweerd's term for Creator.

The di fference in vi ewpoi nts between Dooy-

I'ln other words, history does not have to be fitted into the Cosmo-nomic Law scheme in a modality structure in order finally or perhapsmore immediately to relate for meaning to its Origin, to use Dooye-weerd's term for Creator. II

The historical aspect is only one of thesefundamental modes of experience, and, like theothers, it does not refer to a concrete "what,"that is, to concrete events of temporal reality,but it refers to the moda I "how," the manner inwhich they are experienced in their ~entaspects. The aspects are theoreti c abstractions.It seems to me that the historical modality is anabstraction twice removed from the concrete, somuch so that it almost turns out to be a vacuousconcept. When one considers the act of con-trolled forming, one is tempted to ask, What isthe forming concerned~? Then it turns outthat one has to turn to the other moda I iti es to fi ndthe answer. One can be busy with forming in thepolitical sphere as indicated above in the refer-ence which mentions giving cultural form toso-

cia! existence.Dooyeweerd's narrower concept of the "his-

torical" becomes particularly apparent when helabels as "historicists" those historians who wantto include all human activity as it happened inthe province of history. These men, accordingto Dooyeweerd, are elevating the historical toa position which gives it precedence over theother modalities and would determine their mean-ingmerelyonthebasisofhistoryitself. !tis true,of course, that the "historicist" does not look

eweerd and others comes out perhaps most strik-ingly when we begin to consider laws for history.As was suggested, most historians look for lawsin terms of patterns emerg i ng from the happen i ngsof the past. For Dooyeweerd, laws for historyare "oughts" which should control the directionof our cultural-formative activity. This obliga-tion has been inherent in creation but wasspecifically fortified by the cultural mandate asfound in Genesis 1 :28, "Be fruitful and multiply,and subdue the earth..." Dooyeweerd's abstractlimitation of the formative aspect would almostlimit the reading to "subdue" without illdicatinganything to subdue. Be that as it may, the lawsforthe historical modality read more like ethicaldirectives than conclusions extracted from anempirical and critical study of the past.

The norms which Dooyeweerd would imposefor the use of man's formative power are as follows:

1. ContinuityThis can be presumed to be a law

for all constructive activity; but whengiving an illustration, Dooyeweerd re-fers to man's political activity. It ISimpossible, for example, in the interestof wiping out the evils of past regimesto begin with a new calendar, as theFrench presumed to do after destroying

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separate provinces of activity, and theone does not encroach on the other.

If one follows this line of thinking,then an interesting anomaly is presentedin the case of the Hebrews' choosing aking at the ti me that Samue I was servi ngthe ostensibly triple role of prophet,priest, and king. The Israelites wantedto "differentiate" out the office of ki ngafter the manner of the Canaanites. Inso doing, they were showing signs ofapostasy as they were accused ofreject-ingnot Samuel, but God as their King.Historical "develop~" is here dis-obedience and rebellion against God.

2 lIThe Israelites wanted to'differentiate' out the of-fice of king after the man-

ner of the Canaanites Historical'development' is

heredisobedience and re-bellion against God.'1

3 IntegrationThis suggests the need of organiza-

tionofthe individual specializations insuch a way that large-scale culturaloperations can be carried on efficiently.The coordination needed to bring abouta moonshot or a skylab experiment VIOuldbe a modern example. When one, ina reacti onary way, wants to preventthis kind of integrative activity, he is(according to Dooyeweerd) acting un-historically. Again, we call attentionto the fact that the integration alwaysgoes on in some area covered by theother modalities. It always occurs inthe areas of technical, economic, so-cial, and political activity. Reaction-ary forces are a Iso directed against thiskind of integration (Cf. John Van Dyk,I'Culturallntegration, II Medieval !fu.-

the monarchy.We may note here that in illustra-

tion Dooyeweerd uses an example fromthe area of the juridical aspect of hisscheme, indicating that forming as suchneeds a reference beyond itse If. Fur-ther, we should also note that continuityis not in any waya norm that is peculiarto the historical in Dooyeweerd's lim-ited sense. Continuity, applies, forexample, to the aesthetic as well, orto any other aspect, for that matter, asit ts a law of all existence. In theaesthetic, by way of illustration, wecan suggest that the artist violates thelawofcontinuitywhenhe tries to be soinnovative that no one understands what

he is doing.Differentiation

This norm points in the directionof specialization and division of tasksin roc iety. Dooyeweerd often uses theidea of "opening-up process, " whereby

the simple and unified become morecomplex and differentiated. Differ-entiation brings about the kind of de-

velopment which presently separatesout such institutions as home, school,church, and state. In a "closed" so-ciety, these were often under one head.

Abraham's cultural stage of devel-opmentcouldbe used as an illustrationof an undifferentiated one. To hishouse ho Id, Abraham was prophet, pri est,and king, even though he had no fam-ilyover which he would hold that posi-tion as father. He had the church in hishousehold and he was its political head.He ruled over a sma! I nation-state, asis evident by the fact that he was ableto mustera small but effective fightingforce in pursuit of Chedorlaomer when

Abraham rescued Lot.According to the norm for the form-

ative "historical" modality, Abraham'ssi tuation was non-normative. It needed"opening up." The various culturalpotentialities had to be more fully de-veloped. As society develops, itshouldbecome more differentiated, so thatprophet, priest, and king have their

!.Q!.'i, Part I, p. 13, Dordt Collegeprint-ing).

Some General Criticisms

The Method of Transcendental Critique

By looking at the common "states of affairs"

and finding a place for some common dialoguewith the non-Christian without first insisting thatall recognize the Origin of all meaning, it wouldseem that Dooyeweerd is giving away more in hismethod at the outset than he should. He mayinsist that no one can say anything "subjectively"about the common "states of affairs, " because all

stand in the creation order and must be assumedto have meaning for that reason. But surely onemust admit that the non-Christian does not recog-nize that context of meaning, so he can only makestatements that assume his non-Christian apostasy.I would prefer to ~ with the Origin (God) andthen begin to talk about the common "states ofaffairs. " It is only on that condition that one

should be allowed to claim meaningful statements.As Dooyeweerd himselfwould have to admit, theonly alternative is to start a dialogue on the as-sumptionthat some immanent principle or aspectof creation such as man's reason could be used asa common poi nt of reference.

4.

View of the Kin~dom

It is interesting to notice that thelaws of differentiation and integrationwere already suggested by HerbertSpencer, the English evolutionist. Thisneed not bother us, for we can readilyadmit that it does not take the Chris-tian perspective to understand that

highly complex developments requirehighly complex organizations or "inte-grations." The question of direction isanother matter, however. It took a goodbit of organization to build the towerof Babel, but the intention of the workwas manifestly apostate. Many haveargued that ethically there are priori-ties which take precedence over suchintegrative activities as our moonshots.Dooyeweerd, of course, would not insistthat the law of integration stands indissociation from the Scriptural man-date of love.Individual i zation

This norm applies both to groupsand to individuals. Since the time ofthe Renaissance, the individual has re-ceived a great deal of attention. In-dividualism ran out into apostasy as itreacted to the communal impositionswhich had been part of the earlierchurch-dominated Christendom. InAmerica it ran out into a "rugged in-dividualism," which is equal Iy apostate.In the context of the Scriptures and theChristian life, the idea suggests thatthe individual should be able to makehis own decisions in the areas of per-sonal freedom on the basis of his ownconscience as he stands before God andHis law.

Dooyeweerd suggests that as animpediment to individualization mod-ern totalitarian political systems at-tempt to annihilate the process of dif-ferentiation and individualization by a

methodicalprocessofmentale~alizingof all the cultural spheres, thereby im-plying a fundamental denial of thevalue of the individual persanalit~ inthe opening-up process of history.

If we take Dooyeweerd's transcendentalmethod and add to that his cultural norms, in andby themselves there is really nomarkby which todistinguish his approach from the patterns set bythose who limit themselves to the "social gospel"viewofthekingdom and/or those who with Spen-cer would proceed on the basis of evolutionarynaturalism and its assumptions. Dooyeweerdwould not take the historical norms out of the re-ligious ground motive which he established forthem by assuming a transcendent a priori (Creator)as the basis for the whole of cosmonomic law.There is, however, the danger that the Origin isobscured. As has been illustrated earlier, wecannot think about any norm~, for they are

always religiously qualified.We face another danger with Dooyeweerd's

norms. We may be tempted to make the workingout of these norms to be a kind of preconceivedend as the necessary precondition to the comingof God's Ki ngdom or as that part of the Ki ngdom

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whi ch must arrive before Chri st can return. Itappears that John 0 Ithui s is on the verge of thatkind of thinking with his visions of 1980 as hedelineates them in Out of Concern for the~. 9 There he envisions a Christian daily

newspaper available on the stands and theatermarquees aglow, spelling out the titles of thelatest Christian films. That and more. It seemsto methatthis hope closely approximates a kindof neo-postmillenialism which is foreign to theReformed tradition and is without Biblical war-rant.

We shou1d add at this point that the spinoffof ideas which the disciples are able to "centri-fugate" from the ideas of the master are not alwaysin keeping with the intention of the original.Dooyeweerd te II s us not to expect too muc h byway of perfecting the Kingdom here and now be-cause of the continued countervailing effects ofsin which are ever present and potent.1O

The AmbiQulty of Continuity

So it turns out that if we want to use thenorm of continuity as one of the laws of history,we cannot use it in the same sense that the secu-lar historian uses it and cannot limit it by hislilJ1itations. For the Christian, continuity canonly be posited as a law of history within thecontext of sacred history and its emphasis on God'sCovenant of Grace. This makes it necessary forour concept of "continuity" to be stipulated insuch a way that the secular historian would notbe willing to ucl:.o::pr:i. Cui' i:!ea of conti!1uitywou Id have to allow for events which were notcontinuous with the cause-and-effect relation-ships which the secular historian posits on thebasis of his ideas of natural law. For the Chris-tian, continuity would have to include suchnaturally discontinuous events as the virgin birth,the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ.These events would also fall outside of any"common states of affairs" that the non-Christianmight be willing to share with us.

We could use an example which might notcome quite so readily within the classification ofthe miraculous as the above-mentioned eventsassociated with the Incarnation. Take the caseof Noah. By all the known norms of continuity,Noah would have had no reason to expect a flood.His countrymen surely must have doubted hissanity when they judged him by their norm ofcontinuity. But Noah went ahead because hehad had an intervening word from his covenant-keeping God. He went ahead in spite of all lackof historical-critical evidence. No wonder thatNoah is I isted as a hero of faith. He went aheadin spite of the scholars of his day who would makethe word which Noah had received subject to thescrutiny of the historical-critical method in orderto validate its authority. Noah accepted theonce-spoken, i n-itse If-authority of his covenantGod and staked his life on it. We might add thatmodern Bible-believing Christians can well fol-low Noah's example. It might eliminate some ofthe complexities we insert into our hermeneutics.

Continuity would seem to be so obvious alaw of history that it cannot be denied in either

"For the Christian, con-tinuity would have to in-clude such naturally dis-continuous events as thevirgin birth, the resurrec-tion, and the ascension ofChrist."

a common senseorscientificviewof history. Butin the secular mind, continuity is based on theidea of positive lawsthatallowfor some measureofprediction. With a uniformitarian approach tothe past, the secular scientist assumes that whatis now, must al ways have been. Thus, eventswhich do not now happen could not have hap-pened in earlier history. The secular historianuses this test to throw out as impossible or unre-liableanyeventswhichdonotfit his prescriptionforvalideventsatpresent. This kind of thinkingwill control the secular view of continuity.

History and Natural Law

Those who take the law side of the Dooye-

weerdian modality scheme and make it the pari-

digm for their view of creation often do so out of

the conviction that this scheme is God's Word

for Creation. They often speak of the process in

terms of three divisions: Creator, Law for crea-

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tion, and the resu Iting creation.. They do this inorder to get away from the natural law idea whichgrew out of Greek phi losophy and which remainedin Scholastic philosophy and theology to cut uprealityand meaning into the categories of Natureand Grace. Nature, in the Scholastic scheme,has its own laws, which are the common groundfor non-Christian and Christian activity withoutany presuppositions of basic difference.

Those who work out of this Dooyeweerdianstructure also want to eliminate such distinctionsas "natural" and "supernatural" as doing violenceto Biblical concepts of providence. All eventshappen accmding to God's Law for creation, so£!J is miracle or nothing is miracle, and there isno point in speaking about "special providence"over against general providence.

Whi Ie one can say that in a sense the aboveargumenrsare cogent, we again run into problemsof communication and meaning. It does no goodto try to argue someone out of the term miraclewhen somehow or other it is common practice to

of a Nature-Grace dichotomy wherein the workof Christ is relegated to the realm of grace. Hiswork does not sufficiently touch the whole ofcreation. It also then failsto permeate the nat-ural in such a way as to fulfill the cultural man-date and allow for the building of the Kingdomhere and now. It is too reminiscent of a pie-in-

the-sky theology.While I would agree that we should not limit

Christ's saving work to "soul saving" and in.th.9!respect make history His Story, neverthe less, wemust be open to the Divine Plan of salvation asinforming and dominating the whole course ofhi story. By refusing to renovate their notion ofcontinuity to make room for a Divine Plan in andfor history, the Neo-Orthodox have had to makeroom for two kinds of events, those which canhappen according to the ordinary laws of con-tinuity and then the myths of religion which donot occur in ordinary history but need a newdesignation, namely, "Geschichte."

Dooyeweerd has come close to falling into

distinguish such happenings as flaating axe heads the Neo-Orthodox trap by denying that his modalfrom'sinkingones, a distinction which the Scrip- structure can be used to comprehend the eternal.tures also recognize. It seems to me that the Hedenies that one can conceptualize the mean-Christian can perfectly well continue to use such ings of the Word-revelation. He maintains thatdistinctions without being under suspicion of the human ego is also of a super-modal nature,taking a kind of deistic approach to natural law so that it cannot be comprehended in theoreticwhich would remove God from the ongoing exist- thought. The human ego is caught up in the supra-ence of His Creation. temporal. This super-temporal experience is

found at the re lig ious center of our exi stence.History and Divine Plan Now it turns out that because of a route

laid out by his own system, Dooyeweerd is con-Those who followthe Dooyeweerdian notion fronted with the same stumbling block which

of historical norms, are uncomfortable with the faced the Neo-Orthodox. He must allow toidea that history is His story. The latter emphasis events of the Scriptural account historical statusseems to work against the idea that ~ is the in ordinary time along with ordinary day-to-dayhistory maker and that the process is a process of events, or he must find a different category forfulfilling the norms for cultural forming. Again, some events. Dooyeweerd chooses the latterfor the follower of Dooyeweerd, "Hisstory"smacks course. By having man participate in the tem-

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complicates without warrant the Biblical teach-ings concerning the relationship between theworld and the Word.

So, while we hailed Dooyeweerdas a knightin shining armor as he did battle with immanentis-tic philosophies, armed as he was with a beliefin the Creation, the Fall, and Redemption, wefind his own philosophic forays sometimes some-whatquixotic. Having said that, we should alsosay to his credit that Dooyeweerd ventured outbeyond the safety of the old traditions on "search-and-destroy" missions. Most of us have sat safelybehind the redoubts of the old castle of tradi-tionalism sharpening lance points with bits ofrationalism, hoping in that way to make ourweapons sharper than those of the enemy thoughcast from the same meta I .

poral and the supra-temporal, he must make somekind of distinction which resembles Kant's nou-menal (spirit) world as separated from the phe-nomenal (scientific, thing) world. Kant foundin man an empirical ego to deal with the latterand a transcendenta I ego to dea I with the former.Dooyeweerd does this, at least in part, by cre-ating too great a gap between man's naive ex-perience and his scientific activity, that is, histheoretic thought.

As to sacred history, Dooyeweerd makes aforthright choice. He states, "In this eschato-logical aspect of time, faith groups (places)the"eschaton" and, in general, that which is orhappens beyond the limits of cosmic time. Inthis special sense are to be understood the 'daysof creation', the initial words in the book ofGenesis, the order in which reqeneration pre-cedes conversion, etc I cannot agree withthe tendency of some modern Christian theolo-gians who identify the eschatological aspect oftime with the historical and reject the supra-temporal central sphery of human existence andof divine revelation." 1

In summary, I would draw the followingconclusions: (1) When Dooyeweerd uses theword history and refers to laws of history, he isnot referri ng to the same ideas that are ordinari Iyunderstood by the terms. (2) Dooyeweerd's lawof continuity cannot be taken in a univocal sensealong with any secular definition of the term. Ifwe don't give it Christian meanings, it will cutout the history of salvation as given by the Scrip-tures. (3) While breathing anathemas on all pastdualisms, Dooyeweerd has created a new dualismof his own by placing man both in the temporaland the supra-temporal order. This dua lism hasal I the weaknesses of Kant's dualism between thenoumenal (thought and spirit) world and the'phe-nomenal (science and thing) world. (4) Dooye-weerd's overly neat Cosmonomic encyclopedia(arrangement of modalities, etc.), along with hisdistinctions concerning time, compromiSes and

1. Cf. II Herman Dooyeweerd, II Jerusalem

and Athens, E.R. Geehan, Editor, Presbyterianand Reformed Publishing Company, Nutley, N.J.,1971, pp. 74-89.

2. Op. cit., p. 80.3. Cf. C. Yan Til, Jerusalem and Athens,

pp. 89ff.4. The NewCritiqueof Theoretic Thou~ht,

Philadelphia, Presbyterian and Reformed Publish-ing Co., 1953, Yolo II, p. 3. (Hereinafter tobe referred to by the initials tl.'£.).

5. tl.'£., Yolo I, p. 102.6. tl.f.., Yolo I, p. 33.7. "The Criteria of Progressive and Reac-

tionary Tendencies in History." Speech given tothe Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences and theHumanities. Avai lable from the ReformationalDugout, Sioux Center, Iowa.

8. "The Criteria of Progressive and Reac-tionary Tendencies in History." Op. cit., p.12.

9. Cf. pp. 19 and 20.10. ~..£., Yolo II, p. 262.11. tl..£.,Yol I, p.33.

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