SOME PASSAGES REFERENCING AUGUSTINE FROM HERMAN
DOOYEWEERD'S 'NEW CRITIQUE OF THEORETICAL
THOUGHT'.
NB Dooyeweerd's New Critique
of Theoretical Thought (and books by many other reformed authors) can be
freely downloaded (pdf) at:
_____________________________________
[EXTRACT 1.
Vol 1: 177-187]
Philosophy as ancilla theologiae in Augustinian
scholasticism.
In the orthodox
patristic period philosophical thought reached its highest point in AURELIUS
AUGUSTINUS, who left his stamp upon Christian philosophy until the 13th
century, and who even since then has exerted an important influence.
However, no one was
yet able to express the central motive of the Christian religion in the transcendental
ground-Idea of philosophy without the interference of the Greek form-matter motive. Besides, the
relation between philosophy and dogmatic theology was not clarified, because
the inner point of contact between
the religious ground-motive and philosophic thought had not yet been accounted
for.
The Christian
character of philosophy was sought in its subservient attitude toward dogmatic
theology (1).
______________________
(1) This conception of philosophy as "ancilla
theologiae" is not Christian in origin, but is derived from ARISTOTLE's Met. B. 990 b 15 where the Greek thinker
proclaimed metaphysical theology (as the science of the end of all things and
of the supreme good) to be the queen of the sciences. The other sciences are
thus "the slaves of theology and may not contradict it". This
Aristotelian conception is now simply taken over and applied to the
relationship between Christian theology and philosophy.
______________________
Philosophy was to be
the "ancilla theologiae". All philosophic questions were to be
handled in a theological framework. Philosophy was denied an independent right
to exist.
This denial is
included in AUGUSTINE's famous statement: "Deum
et animam scire volo. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino." AUGUSTINE's denial
of the autonomy of philosophy with respect to the divine light of revelation is
in this way robbed of its critical significance. For philosophic thought itself
was not intrinsically reformed by the Biblical ground-motive of the Christian
religion, but in its theoretical vision of temporal reality it remained
orientated to Greek philosophy (especially toward the Neo-Platonists and the
Stoics). AUGUSTINE did not clearly see the religious character of the
ground-motive of Greek philosophy, and therefore started on the path of
scholastic accommodation of Greek thought to the doctrine of the Christian
church.
The scholastic character of AUGUSTINE's cosmonomic Idea.
Even in the
Augustinian cosmonomic Idea (the lex
aeterna with its expression in the lex
naturalis) we encounter the neo-Platonic conception of the descending
progression of degrees of reality accommodated to the Idea of the divine
Sovereignty of the Creator (2) .
____________
(2) Cf. De Civitate
Dei, x11, 3: "Naturas
essentiarum gradibus ordinavit" and his neo-Platonic theory of the
"esse" and "minus esse". Cf. also his neo-Platonic theory
of the different levels of the mystical elevation of the soul to God.
______________
This latter, however,
was again joined with the neo-Platonic logos-theory, after this theory had been
accommodated to the dogma of the divine Trinity. In this way theology itself
was encumbered with Greek philosophy. Even Genesis 1:1 was interpreted by
AUGUSTINE in the cadre of the Greek form-matter motive!
In spite of all this,
however, the integral and radical character of the central ground-motive of the
Christian religion remained foremost in the theological conceptions of the
great church-father. This motive found expression in the strong emphasis which
he laid upon the absolute creative Sovereignty of God, and in his rejection of
any position which would attribute original power to evil. The central motive
of Christian religion is also in evidence in AUGUSTINE's acceptance of the
radical character of the fall and in his rejection of the autonomy of
theoretical thought, because of the insight that the Word of God is the only
firm ground of truth. However, this insight was only won from the central
religious standpoint. It could, as we observed above, not yet lead to an inner
reformation of philosophical
thought for lack of a critical insight into the inner point of contact between
religion and theoretical thinking.
AUGUSTINE's
increasing reserve with respect to Greek philosophy is also to be explained in
terms of his growing understanding of the radical character of the Christian
religion. At the very least, the great Church-father regarded Greek philosophy
as a natural foundation for a "super-natural revealed knowledge". In
his conception of world-history, developed in his famous work De Civitate Dei, an undeniably original
Christian line of thought is followed. The central theme: the conflict between
the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena, is entirely dominated
by the Biblical ground-motive.
The radical antithesis
between the Christian religion and the ancient heathen world is openly and
sharply laid bare, so that there is not the slightest suggestion of a religious
synthetic point of view. However, here too, the Christian ground-motive could
not yet find expression in a genuine philosophy of history. To be sure,
AUGUSTINE was the first to break radically with the Greek Idea of time, and to
pave the way for an authentic Idea of historical development. But the periods
of this development were not conceived in an intrinsically historical sense:
rather they were construed from sacred history in a speculative theological
way!
The entrance of the dialectical ground-motive of nature and
grace in Christian scholasticism.
The situation became
quite different when the dialectical ground-motive of nature and grace made its
entry into Christian scholasticism. This occurred in the period of the
Aristotelian Renaissance, in which, after a bitter struggle, the
Augustinian-Platonic school was pushed out of the dominating position that it
had hitherto enjoyed. Roman Catholicism now strove consciously to effect a
religious synthesis between the Greek view of nature (especially the
Aristotelian) and the doctrines of the Christian faith.
This synthetic
standpoint found its most powerful philosophical and theological expression in
the system of THOMAS AQUINAS. The two foundational tenets of this system were
the positing of the autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural
knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of super-natural
grace.
THOMAS took over the
Augustinian pronouncement that philosophy is the ancilla theologiae, however, he gave it an entirely different
meaning. For he considered that philosophy belonged to the sphere ruled by the
natural light of reason, and ascribed to it independence of revealed theology.
This would have been a gain for Christian philosophy, if THOMAS had not
withdrawn "natural thought" from the central ground-motive of the
Christian religion. The latter was now replaced by the form-matter motive in its Aristotelian conception, but not without
an accommodation of this pagan religious motive to the ecclesiastical doctrine
of creation.
In this scholastic
way of accommodation, required by the Roman-Catholic ground-motive of nature
and grace, the form-matter motive lost its original religious sense. But at the
same time the Biblical creation-motive
was deprived of its original integral and radical
character.
Creation as a natural truth in THOMAS' theologia naturalis.
Creation is
proclaimed to be a natural truth, which can be seen and proven by theoretical
thought independent of all divine revelation. And we have seen in the
Prolegomena, that the five ways of this proof pre-supposed the axioms of the
Aristotelian metaphysics, and especially the Aristotelian idea of God as
"pure Form" opposed to the principle of "matter".
This signified,
ultimately, the elimination of creation in its Biblical sense as the religious
motive of theoretical thought.
The elimination of the integral and radical meaning of the
Biblical motive of creation in THOMAS' metaphysics.
The Greek form-matter
motive in all its different conceptions excludes in principle the Idea of
creation in its Biblical sense. The sum
total of Greek wisdom concerning the Origin of the cosmos is: "ex nihilo
nihil fit" (from nothing nothing can originate). At the utmost, Greek
metaphysical theology could arrive at the Idea of a divine demiurg, who gives
form to an original matter as the supreme architect and artist. Therefore, the
scholastic accommodation of the Aristotelian concept of God to the
Church-doctrine of creation could never lead to a real reconciliation with the
Biblical ground-motive. The unmoved Mover of Aristotelian metaphysics, who, as
the absolute theoretical nous, only
has himself as the object of his thought in blessed self-contemplation, is the
radical opposite of the living God Who revealed Himself as Creator. THOMAS may
teach that God has brought forth natural things according both to their form
and matter, but the principle of matter as the principle of metaphysical and
religious imperfection cannot find its origin in a pure form — God.
Nor could the
Aristotelian conception of human nature be reconciled to the Biblical conception
concerning the creation of man in the image of God. According to THOMAS, human
nature is a composition of a material body and a rational soul as a substantial
form, which, in contradistinction to ARISTOTLE's conception, is conceived of as
an immortal substance. This scholastic view has no room for the Biblical
conception of the radical religious unity of human existence. Instead of this
unity a natural and a supra-natural aspect is distinguished in the creation of
man. The supra-natural side was the original gift of grace, which as a donum superadditum was ascribed to the
rational nature.
The elimination of the radical meaning of the fall and
redemption. The neo-Platonic Augustinian trend in THOMAS' natural theology.
In accordance with
this conception of creation, the view of the fall was also deprived of its
radical meaning. Sin merely caused the loss of the supernatural gift of grace,
and did not lead to a corruption of human nature. The latter was simply injured
by its loss of the
donum superadditum.
Redemption in Christ
Jesus can no longer have a relation to the very religious root of the temporal
cosmos, but it can only bring nature to its supra-natural perfection.
In his natural
theology THOMAS connected the Aristotelian Idea of God with the neo-Platonic-Augustinian Idea of creation. Just as
he took over the Augustinian doctrine of the logos with its eternal Ideas, so
he strongly developed the metaphysical theory, with respect to the
analogical concept of Being (analogia
entis), in the direction of negative
theology. All this only led to new antinomies, because this trend of
thought came into conflict with the foundations of Aristotelian metaphysics (3).
_____________
(3) See my treatise in Philosophia
Reformata (vol. 8, 9, 10), "De
idee der individualiteits-structuur en het Thomistisch substantiebegrip",
(The idea of the structure of individuality and the Thomistic
substance-concept).
_____________
The Aristotelian cosmonomic Idea.
According to the
scholastic ground-motive of nature and grace, the Thomistic cosmonomic Idea has
a natural and a supra-natural side.
The former rules
THOMAS' philosophy, the latter his theology of revelation. The natural
component is the Aristotelian transcendental ground-Idea, accommodated to the
Augustinian Idea of the lex aeterna.
According to the
Aristotelian cosmonomic Idea all of nature is dominated by a dual teleological
order: every natural substance strives according to its nature toward its own
perfection, which is enclosed in its essential
form.
In their relationship
to each other the substantial forms are arranged in a hierarchical order in
which the lower is the the matter of a higher form. This is the content of the lex naturalis. As pure actual form the
deity can be accepted as the origin of the motion which proceeds from matter
toward form as its goal. However, there is no way in which the deity can be
considered as the origin of the principle of matter, with its blind arbitrary αναγκέ. Even the Aristotelian theory of categories is permeated
with the dualism of its dialectical ground-motive. It makes a fundamental
distinction between the specific categories of matter (spatiality, number) and
those of form. The concept of substance, as the central category of being,
pretends to unite into an absolute unity the form and matter of natural beings.
But it cannot accomplish this union, because it lacks a real starting-point for
this synthesis. To attain this desired result it would be necessary to have a
deeper radical unity above the opposed principles of form and matter (4).
__________
(4) Apparently ARISTOTLE tried to relativize the absolute
contradiction between the two poles of the Greek ground-motive by conceiving of
them in the modal meaning of the cultural aspect. In this modal aspect
form-giving is related to a material which as "cultural object" has a
potentiality to cultural shapes. The orientation of the relation between matter
and form to culture is entirely in keeping with the ascription of religious
primacy to the form-motive of the culture-religion.
__________
And, as we saw in the
Prolegomena, the metaphysical (transcendental) concept of being can only bring
them into an analogical unity.
The content of the Thomistic cosmonomic idea.
In THOMAS' cosmonomic
Idea the Aristotelian lex naturalis,
which is immanent to natural substances, is related to a transcendent lex aeterna as the plan of creation in
the divine Mind.
The latter is the
Origin of the former. In conformity with the Aristotelian Idea of God, the lex aeterna was now considered identical
with divine reason. As a compromise
with the Augustinian conception,
only the obligating force of the lex naturalis (what is here thought of
is only the natural ethical law) is derived from the sovereign will of the
Creator. The Christian Idea of divine providence in the order of creation is
now transformed into the Aristotelian Idea of the teleological natural order,
with its hierarchy of substantial forms, which conforms to the religious
form-matter motive.
In the typical transcendental ground-Idea of
Thomism the divine Origin of the natural order was conceived of as the first
cause and final goal of the whole temporal movement in nature from matter to
form, from means to end. And the supra-natural sphere of grace, in which the
divine Origin is conceived in the light of Revelation and in which the lex naturalis finds its supra-natural
complement in the lex charitatis et
gratiae, was placed above the natural order as a higher level. It is this
view that became the speculative philosophic expression of the Idea of
synthesis which typified the entire ecclesiastically unified culture.
The intrinsic dialectic of the scholastic basic motive of
nature and grace and the nominalism of the fourteenth century.
However, the
intrinsic dialectic of the motive of nature and grace in scholastic philosophy
soon became evident.
As long as the Roman
Catholic church was strong enough, the artificial synthesis between the
Christian and Greek world of Ideas could be maintained, and the polar
tendencies in the ground-motive of nature and grace could not develop freely.
Ecclesiastical excommunication was sufficient to check the development of these
tendencies in philosophy and in every day affairs.
In the critical period
of the Late Middle Ages however, as we shall see in the following paragraph,
the ecclesiastically unified culture began to collapse. One secular sphere
after another began to wrest itself free from ecclesiastical domination.
Since the 14th century
the nominalism of the late scholasticism under the leadership of WILLIAM OF
OCCAM, turned against the artifical compromise between Christian and pagan
lines of thought in the Thomistic system. This reaction commenced after the
Averroistic PETRUS AUREOLI and DURANDUS of St. Porcain, in a somewhat different
philosophical and theological orientation, had taken up the nominalistic
tradition of earlier centuries.
Before the 14th
century nominalism had been always suppressed by realistic scholasticism with
its doctrine of the reality of the universal forms ("universalia").
It had repeatedly received the official condemnation of the church. In the 14th
century, however, nominalism became a cultural factor of world-significance. It
was able to pave the way for modern philosophical thought, since the church had
lost its dominating influence on philosophy.
The Thomistic
cosmonomic Idea required the realistic-metaphysical conception of the
Aristotelian "substantial forms". As soon as this conception would be
abandoned, the whole Thomistic-Aristotelian Idea of the natural order, as an
understructure of the supra-natural order of grace, was doomed to break down.
And the same holds good in respect to natural theology as an understructure of
the sacred theology of revelation.
At this very point
Thomism was subjected to the criticism of OCCAM's nominalism, which, in the
last analysis, was founded on an extremely nominalistic conception of the "potestas Dei absoluta". It
cut off every metaphysical use of natural reason by denying that the universal
concepts of thought have a "fundamentum
in re" (5).
_____________
(5) It may be observed in this connection that OCCAM
started from the traditional metaphysical opposition between the logical
thought-function and "reality in itself"; and that the only sources
of our knowledge are to be found in sensory perception and logical
understanding. We have seen in the Prolegomena, that this metaphysical
pre-supposition excludes the insight into the integral horizon of our temporal
experience.
_____________
It joined forces with
the so-called terministic suppositional logic as presented in the seventh
treatise (6)
of the "Summulae" of PETRUS
HISPANUS and conceived of "universalia" as only being
"signs", which in the human mind stand for (supponunt) a plurality of individual things, but which themselves
possess no reality "in" or "before" the latter. In so far
as they do not rest upon arbitrary convention, as the "voces", the "universalia" are "conceptus"
or "intentiones animae"
formed by the understanding. They function merely as copies of the
corresponding traits of individual things and only have a subjective value for
knowledge. When OCCAM limited scientific knowledge to the logical judgment and
the universalia, he thereby intended to depreciate science and not the
Christian faith.
Faith, in a
positivist manner bound to Holy Scripture — here conceived in a pseudo-juridical sense, as an
ecclesiastical lawbook — and to the tradition of the Church, may maintain the
realistic conception of "substantial forms". But philosophical
thought can only hold to a completely sceptical attitude with respect to the
reality of universals. This position destroyed the realistic metaphysical
concept of truth.
___________
(6) Under the title "de
terminorum proprietatibus",
later expanded to a separate textbook under the title "Parva Logicalia". This part
of the Summulae did not stem from
Aristotelian logic. And in opposition to PRANTL, recent investigations have
established that it was even less of Byzantine origin. The "Moderni"
grounded themselves just on this treatise, whereas e.g. Duns Scotus chose the whole book of PETRUS HISPANUS as the
foundation of his logic, and joined the 7th treatise with realistic
metaphysics.
___________
The "primacy of the will" in the nominalistic
school of thought versus the "primacy of the intellect" in the
realistic metaphysics of THOMAS AQUINAS. There is no essential connection
between realism and the primacy of the intellect.
The brunt of the
attack upon the Thomistic conception of the "lex aeterna" lay in the
nominalistic turning of the doctrine of the primacy of the will against the
Thomistic doctrine of the primacy of the intellect. This whole controversy can
only be understood in the light of scholastic and patristic syncretism. It is
meaningless in a philosophy which in its transcendental ground-Idea holds to
the integral and radical ground-motive of the Christian religion.
The conflict between
the primacy of the will and the primacy of the intellect was originally
unrelated to the conflict between realism and nominalism. Realists of the
Augustinian school had contended for the primacy of the will. And JOHANNES DUNS
SCOTUS, the great opponent of THOMAS
AQUINAS, was essentially a more consistent realist than THOMAS. Nevertheless,
in his doctrine of the Potestas Dei
Absoluta, he gave a new stimulus to the conception of the primacy of the
will.
The primacy of the will in the cosmonomic Idea of
AUGUSTINE.
We have seen, that
even in the cosmonomic Idea of
AUGUSTINE the risky attempt was made to reconcile the Christian
conception of the Absolute Sovereignty of God's Creative Will with the
neo-Platonic basic Idea of the hierarchical ordination of reality in higher,
more real and lower, less real spheres, in which pure matter formed the lowest
level (7).
In AUGUSTINE's later period we find priority being given to the Christian
conception of God's Will as Creator and to the insight into the obfuscation of
human reason by the fall. This Christian conception became involved in the
proclamation of the "primacy of the will", because it had to wrestle
with the competitive realistic metaphysics which sought its Archimedean point
in theoretic reason.
Nominalism was
related to the Augustinian tradition by way of Franciscan thought. However,
OCCAM changed the doctrine of the primacy of the will in a radically
irrationalistic manner. He totally deformed the Christian confession of God's
Sovereignty as Creator.
_________
(7) Cf. De civitate
Dei XII, 2: "natural essentiarum gradibus ordinavit" and his
neo-platonic doctrine of the "esse"
et "minus esse". Compare
also his neo-platonic levels of the mystical elevation of the soul to God.
__________
The potestas Dei
absoluta in DUNS SCOTUS and WILLIAM OF OCCAM.
In DUNS SCOTUS the potestas Dei absoluta, as distinguished
from the potestas Dei ordinata, was
bound to the unity of God's holy and good Being
(essence). According to him, the lex
aeterna also originates in the essence of God. And absolute goodness and
truth are grounded in the divine Being (8). Consequently, the Scotist conception of the potestas absoluta cannot have any
nominalistic purport. It had no further intention than to account for the fact
that sometimes in the Old Testament God seems to give "dispensation"
of some commands of the second table of the Decalogue. This was doubtless a
scholastic-juridical conception of the latter. However, in DUNS the potestas Dei absoluta, too, is always
the expression of God's holy and good Being.
WILLIAM OF OCCAM
abandoned the idea of a lex aeterna
and a potestas absoluta "being
bound to God's Being". In Aristotelian fashion the
speculative-metaphysical theology had viewed the essence of God as pure Form. Nominalism now conceived of God in
His Word, to an even greater degree than the Thomistic realism had done in its theologia naturalis. It abstracted the
Will of God from the Fulness of His Holy Being and conceived of His sovereign
power as an orderless tyranny. In his De
Trinitate AUGUSTINE had expressly warned against isolating the Will of God
and the "ratio divina".
___________
(8) Cf. the following statements of SCOTUS:
"Intelligere non est primum in Deo, sed PRIMUM DANS ESSE EST IPSUM ENS,
tum quia potentia non potest esse prima ratio essendi, tum quia intellectus
praesupponit rationem objecti et potentiae sicut per se causas ejus vel
principia" (R. P. I d.viii q. 1). "Deus est agens rectissima
ratione" (R. P. iv d. 1 q. 5, n. 9).
"Quidquid Deus facit, propter se facit —
omnia enim propter seipsum operatus est Altissimus —
et ex charitate perfectissima quae ipse est, facit; ergo ejus actus est
ordinatissimus, tame ex fine quam ex principio operativo" (Ox. II d.
xxvii, q. I, n. 2).
"Nomine legis aeternae intelligimus judicium divini intellectus,
qui producens omnia in esse intelligibile, subinde dat unicuique primum esse
intelligibile, atque in eis omnes veritates relucent, adeo ut intellectus
pervadens terminos necessario intelligat veritates omnes in illis involutas,
tam speculativas, quam practicas" (Ox. I, d. iii q. 4).
___________
*******************************************
[EXTRACT 2.
Vol 1: 195-196]
The Cartesian "Cogito" in contra-distinction to
the theoretic nous as the Archimedian
point of Greek metaphysics.
After much preparation
in various sorts of directions (especially in the system of NICOLAUS CUSANUS)
the principles of Humanistic philosophical thought received their first clear
formulation in the system of DESCARTES. The cogito in which this thinker
supposed he had found his Archimedean point, is in no sense identical with the "logos" or "nous" of classic Greek
philosophy. In the latter, human reason was conceived of as bound to an
objective metaphysical order of being, in which the thinking subject only has a
part. This metaphysical order was considered as the standard of truth in
respect to theoretical
thought.
Quite different from this Greek conception of reason is that of the founder of
Humanistic philosophy.
By means of the
"cogito", DESCARTES called to a halt the universal methodical
scepticism with respect to all the data of experience. The given world should
be broken up in a methodical theoretical way in order to reconstruct it from
autonomous mathematical thought. It is the new ideal of personality which is
active behind this philosophical experiment. It does not accept any order or
law that the sovereign personality of man had not itself prescribed in rational
thought. Although DESCARTES substantialized this cogito to a "res
cogitans" and thereby seemed to fall back upon scholastic metaphysics, no
one
should fail to recognize that in his new regulatives for methodical thought the
Humanistic motive of freedom and of
the domination of nature is the
driving force.
From his "cogito, ergo sum" the French
thinker directly proceeds to the Idea of God, and therein discovers the
foundation of all further knowledge. This Idea of God is nothing but the
absolutizing of mathematical thought to divine thought, which cannot mislead
us. The whole Idea of God serves to imprint upon the new mathematical method
the mark of infallibility.
The Jansenists of
Port Royal who accepted Cartesianism as an exact method of thinking, supposed
they had found an inner affinity between DESCARTES' founding of all knowledge
in self-consciousness and the immanent Idea of God, and AUGUSTINE's "Deum et
animam scire volo". This was a grave error.
There is no relationship between DESCARTES' and AUGUSTINE's
Archimedean point. The misconception of the Jansenists of Port Royal on this
issue.
For this inner
affinity does not exist, in spite of the appearance of the contrary. In an
unsurpassed manner CALVIN expounded in his Institutio
the authentic Christian conception of AUGUSTINE
which made all knowledge of the cosmos dependent upon self-knowledge, and made
our self-knowledge dependent upon our knowledge of God. Moreover, CALVIN
dissociated this conception from AUGUSTINE's scholastic standpoint with regard
to philosophy as "ancilla
theologiae". This view is radically opposed to the
conception
of DESCARTES. In his "cogito", the latter implicitly proclaimed the
sovereignty of mathematical thought and deified it in his Idea of God, in a
typically Humanistic attitude towards knowledge.
Consequently, there
is no inner connection between AUGUSTINE's refutation of scepticism by
referring to the certainty of thought which doubts, and DESCARTES' "cogito, ergo sum". AUGUSTINE
never intended to declare the naturalis
ratio to be autonomous and unaffected by the fall.
****************************************
[EXTRACT 3.
Vol 1: 226-227]
The secularization of the motive of nature and grace in
LEIBNIZ' philosophy.
Even the scholastic
contrast between the sphere of nature and the sphere of grace and the Idea of
the subservience of the former to the latter reappears in LEIBNIZ. But he
ascribes to this dialectical motive a completely different meaning. Even from
this it is clearly evident, that his philosophy is not grounded in a scholastic
accommodation of the Greek basic motive to that of Christian thought (as in
THOMAS), but that it is rooted solely in the Humanistic immanence-standpoint.
In LEIBNIZ the sphere
of grace never means anything but the realm of rational creatures who are in
possession of freedom by clear and distinct thought. And the sphere of nature
is only the realm of creatures who lack this freedom. In the former the deity
(pure reason) displays itself as the most wise monarch; in the latter, as the
most perfect architect. In the first, laws are ethical, and in the second,
mechanical (9).
In this way also AUGUSTINE's Christian conception of the Civitas Dei becomes denaturated in LEIBNIZ' speculative
metaphysics. AUGUSTINE's conception is reduced to an Idea of a constitutional
kingdom in which the deity reigns by the grace of metaphysical-mathematical
thought. The creative will of the deity is bound to the eternal metaphysical
verities of the latter. LEIBNIZ' Humanistic secularization of the Christian
religion received its most evident expression in his conception of sin as a privatio. At first sight this conception
seems to be orientated to that of AUGUSTINE, but actually it is entirely
Cartesian. LEIBNIZ holds sin to be a lack of (mathematical) distinctness and
clearness in conception, because of which the will does not arrive at a correct
judgment.
_________
(9) Principes de la
nature et de la grace (1714) 15 (ERDMANN 717): "C'est pourquoi tous
les esprits, soit des hommes, soit des génies entrant en vertu de la raison et
des vérités
éternelles
dans une espèce de société
avec Dieu, sont des membres de la Cité de Dieu, c'est à
dire, du plus parfait état, formé
et gouverné par le plus grand et le meilleur des
Monarques, où il n'y a point de crime sans châtiment,
point de bonnes actions sans recompense proportionée;
et enfin, autant de vertu et de bonheur qu'il est possible; et cela, non pas
par un dérangement de la Nature comme si ce
que Dieu prépare aux âmes
troubloit les loix des corps; mais par l'ordre même
des choses naturelles, en vertu de l'harmonie préétablie
de tout temps entre les Règnes de la Nature et de la Grâce."
[Principles of nature
and grace: "Therefore all spirits, either of men or of genii, entering
by means of reason and the eternal verities into a sort of society with God,
are members of the City of God, that is to say of the most perfect state,
formed and governed by the greatest and the best of monarchs; where there is
not any crime without punishment, not any good deed without proportionate
recompense; and finally as much virtue and happiness as is possible; and such not
by means of a disarrangement of Nature, as if that which God prepares for the
souls should disturb the laws of the bodies; but by the very order of natural
things, by virtue of the harmony pre-established for all times between the
realms of Nature and of Grace."
_________
*********************************
[EXTRACT 4.
Vol 1: 515-517]
Why a radical Christian philosophy can only develop in the
line of CALVIN's religious starting-point.
CALVIN also passed
through an early Humanistic period during which he wrote his well-known
commentary on SENECA's De Clementia.
But when he reached the turning-point of his life, he broke radically with the
nominalistic dualism that more or less continued to flourish within LUTHER's
world of thought and that was dominated by the scholastic ground-motive of
nature and grace.
In CALVIN's Biblical
view-point this scholastic motive is eliminated. He maintained that the true
nature of man cannot be opposed to grace. Nature is in its root corrupted by
the fall, and is only restored or (as CALVIN more pregnantly states)
"re-newed" by God's grace in Jesus Christ (10).
____________
(10) See Institutio
religionis Christianae (1559), II, 1, 9: "Uncle sequitur partem illam,
in qua refulget animae praestantia et nobilitas, non modo vulneratam esse, sed
ita corruptam, ut non modo sanari, sed novam prope naturam induere opus
habeat." ["From this it follows that that part upon which shines the
excellence and nobility of the soul, not only is wounded, but as much corrupted
that it not only needed to be healed, but nearly to assume a new nature."]
Also see II, 1, 6, where the radical character of sin is sharply set forth.
__________
This was also AUGUSTINE's conception. The Bible does
not permit any view of nature, in distinction to grace, in which human reason
in its apostasy from God, becomes the main stay of a "philosophia et theologia naturalis". It does not
sanction any view in which the νοὸς
τῆς σαρκὸς (that is to say, the intellect which is apostate from
Christ in the sense of thinking according to the "flesh") is declared
to be sovereign.
God's revelation must
take hold of the heart, the root of our entire existence, that we may
"stand in the truth". CALVIN hits rationalistic scholasticism at the
root of its apostasy from a Christian attitude towards knowledge, when he
writes: "Nec satis fuerit mentem
esse Dei spiritu illuminatam, nisi et eius virtute cor obfirmetur ac fulciatur.
In quo tota terra Scholastici aberrant, qui in fidei consideratione nudum ac
simplicem ex notitia assensum aripiunt, praeterita cordis fiducia et
securiate" (11).
__________
(11) "And it will not have been sufficient that the
mind is illuminated by the Spirit of God, unless also by its virtue the heart
is made firm and is strenghtened. In this matter the scholastics completely
deviate, which in a superficial way conceive the motive of faith as a mere and
simple assent by virtue of the understanding, whereas the confidence and surety
of the heart is completely neglected." This statement only gives
expression to the pure Biblical conception which considers knowledge —
and in the first place knowledge furnished by faith —
to be rooted in the heart from which proceeds the issues of life. This is
characteristically misunderstood by Roman Catholics as
"sentimentalism". In 1931 A. J. M. CORNELISSEN wrote a meritorious
comparative study concerning the Doctrine
of the State of "Calvin and Rousseau". In this thesis which he
defended at the Roman Catholic University of Nijmegen, he wrote (page 25):
"If faith does neither require a praeambula furnished by reason, but the
reverse, rational knowledge is strengthened by faith, then, if one is
consistent, the act of super-natural "knowing" is only an act of
feeling. CALVIN drew this conclusion and thus fell into sentimentalism."
Under the influence of Thomistic-Aristotelian epistemology the insight
into what the Bible means by the "heart", as the religious centre of
life, has been so completely lost sight of that there remains nothing else to
do but identify it with the temporal function of feeling and then place it in
opposition to theoretical thought.
____________
CALVIN radically
rejected the speculative natural theology. He called it an "audacious
curiosity" of human reason that seeks to intrude upon the "essentiae Dei", which we can
never fathom, but can only worship (12). Again and again he warned against the "vacua et meteorica speculatio" on God's essence apart from
His revelation in His Word (13). CALVIN expressed the true critical religious attitude
concerning knowledge of God, an attitude grounded in the humble insight into
the essential boundary between the Creator and the creation, in timidity with
respect to the deep mystery of God's majesty.
The scholastic motive
of nature and grace is not found in CALVIN's thought, nor is there any trace of
the spiritualistic contrast between the divine Law and the Gospel, [as] found
in LUTHER. God's divine Majesty does not tolerate the blotting out of the
boundary between the Creator and the creation. In view of this boundary,
LUTHER's elevation of Christian liberty beyond the limits of the lex divina cannot be accepted.
__________
(12) Inst. I, 5,
9: "Unde intelligimus hanc esse rectissimam Dei quaerendi viam et
aptissimam ordinem; non ut audaci curiositate penetrare tentemus ad excutiendam
eius essentiam, quae adoranda potius est quam scrupulosius disquirenda; sed ut
illum in suis operibus contemplemur, quibus se propinquum nobis familiaremque
reddit ac quodammodo communicat." ["Hence we understand, that this is
the most correct way and appropriate order to seek God; not that in an
audacious curiosity we try to penetrate into an examination of His essence,
which is rather to be adored than scrupulously to be examined; but that we
contemplate Him in His works by which He comes near to us, makes Himself
familiar to us and in some way communicates Himself."]
(13) Ibid. I, 10,
2: "deinde commemorari eius virtutes quibus nobis describitur non quis sit
apud se, sed qualis erga nos; ut ista eius agnitio vivo magis sensu, quam vacua
et meteorica speculatione constet." ["Moreover we must remember His
virtues by which is described to us not what He is in Himself, but how He is in
respect to us; in order that this knowledge about Him may rather consist in a
lively consciousness than in a void and meteoric speculation."]
___________
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[EXTRACT 5.
Vol 2: 20-22]
The 'being of what is' in Greek and scholastic realistic
metaphysics.
In this respect there
is indeed a striking contrast between modern ontology and ARISTOTLE's
metaphysics as πρώτη
φιλοσοφία, as a theory of the 'being of what is' (τò όν η όν) (14). For here 'being' as a unity
with its highest metaphysical principles (αρχαί) is directly founded in
reason as αρχή
των αρχών which is the origin of the 'eternal truths'. It is not a
generic concept here, but rather the noumenal ground of all generic concepts,
and even exalted above the diversity of the categories (15). In the primordial doctrine
of the 'being of what is' all the first metaphysical basic concepts are
treated.
Among the first
transcendental determinations of 'being' are 'the being true' and the 'being
good'. 'Being' in an absolute
actual sense is identical with the deity (the pure νοὸς, the "ens
realissimum" as it is called in scholasticism).
Even in AUGUSTINE 'being' and 'truth' are
identified: Veritas est id quod est (16).
In realistic
Scholasticism 'being' is the highest of the 'transcendentalia'.
____________
(14) Metaph. IV
(I) 1, 1003 a 22: εστιν έπιστήμη τις ή θεωρεί τό ον ή ον καί τα τούτω ύπάρχοντα καθ’ αύτό.
(15) Metaph. IV (Γ)
'3, 1005 a 27. Praedicam. C. 1; Metaph. X (I) 2, 1054a 13.
(16) Soliloqu. I,
II, c. 5, PL. 32 Sp. 889.
_____________
THOMAS AQUINAS
in his first article of the Quaestiones
disputatae de veritate calls 'being' the first and best known basic
concept, to which all other notions lead back, because the intellect only
determines the 'modes of being' (17). In his Summa
Theologiae absolute 'being' is
also identified with metaphysical (non-arithmetical) unity, which is in
accordance with the Aristotelian way of thinking. Unity and plurality, the
whole and its parts, and the basic notions resulting from them, together with
potentiality and actuality are counted among the most universal and fundamental
grounds of being (18).
In many respects the
same view is held by DUNS SCOTUS, who (with AVICENNA, ALBERTUS MAGNUS and
THOMAS) calls 'being', as
'transcendens', the first object of the intellect, from which the universal determinations
of 'being' such as verum, bonum, etc., are
derived as secondaries (19).
So in realistic
metaphysics we invariably find 'the being of what is' conceived of as the
rational ground of all diversity of meaning; and the fundamental notion of 'being' is connected as closely as
possible with the supreme principles of reason, on which the whole system
depends.
In the case of
HARTMANN, on the other hand, 'being'
taken in an ontological sense is entirely detached from the Άρχη and the Archimedian point, and therefore, philosophically
speaking, it is a notion formed for the occasion, created in order to get out
of a scrape.
The cognitive subject
may be posited as the Reflektions-punkt' of 'being-in-itself' by
HARTMANN (20),
but the really transcendental direction towards transcendence has been lost.
The 'being of what
is' has changed from an 'ens nobis notissimum' into an agnostic 'asylum
ignorantiae', turned away from the selfhood; and in this unknown 'being' the
root, the ground of the 'being' of the selfhood, has been concealed.
Thus the truly basic
notion of 'being' in realistic
metaphysics has evaporated into an unqualified generic notion, whose diversity
is delimited only by 'differentia specifica'.
_______________
(17) Quaest. disp. de
veritate qu. 1, art. 1. c.: 'Illud autem quod primo intellectus concipit
quasi notissimum et in quo omnes conceptiones resolvit, est ens, ut Avicenna
dicit in principio metaphysicae suae.'
(18) Summa Theol.
I. qu. art. 2. c. j°. Expos.
in Metaph. Prol.: 'Unde et illa scientia maxima est intellectualis quae
circa principia maxime universalia versatur. Quae quidem sunt ens et ea quae
consequuntur ens, ut unum et multa, potentia et actus.'
(19) Quaest. sup.
Metaph. I, IV, q. 1 (Opera
Omnia, Paris) : 'Primum obiectum intellectus est ens ut commune omnibus.' Ib.I.
VI qu. 3: 'Cum autem quodcumque ens sit per se intelligibile et nihil possit in
quocunque essentialiter includi nisi ens, sequitur quod primum obiectum
intellectus erit ens. Quascunque autem rationes transcendentes, quae sunt quasi
passiones entis ut verum, bonum etc. sunt posteriores primo obiecto.'
(20) lb., p. 201 fl.
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[EXTRACT 6.
Vol 2: 294-295]
The meaning of history in the light of the Divine
Word-Revelation.
Directing our glance
to historical development from the temporal aspect of faith as the
transcendental terminal function of the whole process of disclosure, we see
this process inevitably related to the religious fulfilment of meaning and the
Origin of history.
In the religious root
of our cosmos (hence also in the root of the whole of historical development)
irreconcilable war is waged between the civitas
Dei and the civitas terrena. The
temporal function of faith in determining the direction of the opening-process
in the earlier law-spheres is itself immediately directed by religious basic
motives in which this radical contest expresses itself.
This gives the Idea
of cultural development its true and only possible fulfilment of meaning in the religious self-reflection of the
Christian.
ST AUGUSTINE grasped
the Biblical thought for the entire Christian view of history when he stated
that, at bottom, the course of the history of the world is a struggle between
the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena. In the last analysis,
therefore, history becomes meaningless
if it is detached from this religious root.
No Christian
philosophy of history will ever be able to give to its Idea of cultural
development another religious direction than this. Any other view is bound to
lapse into the developmental Ideas of Humanistic immanence-philosophy, or into
the Greek Idea of the eternal return of things in the circular movement of
time.
The modal temporal
meaning of history has, to be sure, its meaning-nucleus in culture as
(formative) control, which has been set as a responsible task to man. But the
historical law-sphere can only maintain this meaning in its absolute dependence
on the religious fulness of meaning of history. The possibility of human
formative control has its guarantee in the victory over the kingdom of Darkness
gained by the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus, in Whom the call to historical
power, as well as Christian faith, find their consummation. For Christ, to Whom
'all power is given in heaven and in earth' (Matth. 28:18), is also 'the
finisher of our faith' (Hebr. 12:2).
The struggle between civitas Dei and civitas terrena is carried on through the whole of the temporal
creation in all its meaning-aspects. It finds its pregnant and dramatic
expression in the temporal course of world-history, since here the whole
opening-process in its normative direction is founded. Adam's fall into sin and
Christ's incarnation, although both concern the root of the entire cosmos, also signify historical turning-points of all-deciding importance in the history
of the world.
The history of
salvation is and remains, in a modal-historical sense, the central theme in
whose light even the pagan and Humanistic ideas of culture only become fully
understandable in their apostate meaning.
But it was a
premature and incorrect opinion of the earlier Christian philosophy of history
to assume that Holy Scripture itself has revealed a theoretical Idea of
historical development, so that it is possible to read in the Word of God a
kind of scientific division of world-history into periods. This misconception
had a deeper foundation in an erroneous conception of Christian science.
A truly Christian philosophical Idea of the
history of the world pre-supposes a laborious work of theoretical analysis. The
meaning of history must be distinguished in the whole of the meaning-coherence
of the temporal law-spheres, in the transcendent light of the Divine
Word-Revelation. And the science of history, if it is not to lapse into idle
speculation, can never attempt a division into periods independent of the
actual course of historical development. In addition, every attempt at such a
division is bound to the provisional phase of history in which the historian
himself lives. The latter should not risk predicting the periods that belong to
the future. He will have to conceive of the scene of world history, not in an extensive sense, but intensively. His task is to investigate
the historical coherences in the process of the disclosed development of
history in strict conformity to the historical material.
This is the reason
why the question as to the handling of the Christian Idea of development in
historical science requires further investigation. For this question, as will
appear in the sequel, confronts us with some new and extremely difficult
problems.
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[EXTRACT 7.
Vol 3: 509-510]
CHAPTER IV
THE STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE OF THE TEMPORAL CHURCH-INSTITUTION
§ 1 -
INTRODUCTION. THE BASIC PROBLEM OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE "ECCLESIA INVISIBILIS" AND THE
"ECCLESIA VISIBILIS" * IN
ROMAN-CATHOLICISM AND IN THE REFORMERS.
[*I adopt the traditional indication of the transcendent corpus Christi and its immanent temporal
manifestation as ecclesia invisibilis
and ecclesia visibilis respectively,
because I want to restrict my deviations from the prevailing terminology to
what is strictly necessary. But I cannot say that I think this terminology
particularly felicitous. It has been derived from the metaphysical antithesis
between noumenon and phenomenon (even Dr A. KUYPER, Encycl. der H. Godgeleerdheid III, p. 191 uses these terms). However,
we need not at all interpret these terms in a speculative sense. CALVIN did not
do so, nor does KUYPER use the terms noumenon
and phenomenon in this connection in
a speculative sense. In any case the terms "ecclesia
visibilis" and "invisibilis"
are to be preferred to the new terminology proposed by KATTENBUSCH in his work Doppelschichtigkeit in Luthers
Kirchenbegriff and by BRUNNER in Das
Gebot and die Ordnungen, viz.
"Kirche des Glaubens" (Kirche im Grundsinn) and "Kultgemeinde". The
conception implied by this terminology unambiguously absolutizes the temporal
community of faith to the transcendent root of the Church. The
"cult community" as an "empirical community" is not
conceived of in its only possible sense of a temporal community of faith in its common cult but is opposed to the community of faith as the empirical versus the
transcendent, hidden Church (cf. BRUNNER, op.
cit., p. 521). This fideistic standpoint falsifies the structure of the
temporal Church-institution. Its consequences are apparent in the entire view
these writers take of the conception that the Reformers had concerning the
relation between the ecclesia visibilis and the ecclesia invisibilis.]
From the outset
Christian thought related the idea of the Christian State to the idea of the "una sancta ecclesia". So long
as the Church was conceived in its supra-temporal religious fulness of meaning
as the body of Christ, this conception was the only one possible. There should
not remain any doubt about this in the mind of those who place themselves on
the Biblical standpoint (21).
ST. AUGUSTINE was not wrong when he held the State which had been
separated from the body of Christ, to be part of the civitas terrena. Neither was he wrong when he considered the body
politic as a divine institution and not sinful as such, although human apostasy
is apparent in the historical realization of its structural principle.
The reason is that
this sinful human formative activity cannot affect the inner nature of the
State as a divine institution. In line with REUTER and GIERKE, ST. AUGUSTINE's
basic thought has often been fundamentally misrepresented, because the internal
structural principle of the State, and human positivation and actualization of
this structural principle, as a subjective activity, were not properly
distinguished. Moreover, AUGUSTINE himself has given occasion to
misunderstanding since he did not properly distinguish the Church, as the
kingdom of Christ in the hearts of men, from the temporal Church institution.
This was why he held to the erroneous opinion that the State can only become Christian
by subjecting itself to the guidance of the institutional Catholic Church. In
this respect his famous work De Civitate
Dei laid the foundation for the medieval view of the Holy Roman Empire,
with its secular and spiritual sword, under the supremacy of the latter.
___________
(21) It was also Calvin's view; this has been elaborately
demonstrated by BOHATEC in his Die
organische Idee in der Gedankenwelt Calvins, translated under my
supervision and published in the periodical A.R.
Staatkunde, 2e jrg. 1926, pp 362 ff.
___________
