Roots of Western Culture

summary
Dooyeweerd now turns to the second religious ground motive (RGM), the biblical, creation, fall and redemption.

the creation motive
In its integrality (all things are created) and radicality (it penetrates to the root of created reality) the biblical ground motive stands in antithesis to the Greek RGM. Creation, fall and redemption is a Word-revelation of God.

God is the creator of all things – no power stands over against him.

The Greeks know nothing of a creation from nothing. For the Greeks a god was the deification of either the cultural or movement aspect of creation.

A synthesis of Christian and the form/ matter motive is impossible.

God created humanity in his image and revealed himself in the ‘religious root unity of his creaturely existence’. The heart is the religious centre of humanity. Human life is to be directed towards God in every area and aspect.

The heart is the religious centre and temporal existence of humanity. Humanity is also created in a religious community.

God created humanity as lord of creation. Humanity is to develop and disclose the potential in creation. So when Adam sinned the whole temporal order fell away from God.

Only humans have a spiritual or religious root.

Materialist’s view ‘Nature’ apart from humanity – but this is cannot be the case: mathematical formulae by which they ‘describe’ ‘Nature’ presupposes human thought and language. ‘Nature’ apart from humanity does not exist.

Temporal reality only becomes full reality in humanity.

The scriptural RGM is not dualistic.

scriptural view of soul and body
How we understand the ‘soul’ has been fiercely debated – it can only be understood with reference to the antithesis between the scriptural and Greek RGMs.

There is an on going battle between competing GMs: Christian versus apostate spirits.

Is the question of the soul only one that psychology can answer? What if psychology answers according to a Greek GM? Scholastic theology does try to push the church into accepting a Greek view of the soul.

But any conception of the soul that is determined by a Greek GM can’t stand before the revelation of creation, fall and redemption.

What are we to understand by the soul is a religious question not scientific one. It is the religious focus of human existence in which all temporal reality is concentrated.

Self-knowledge is totally dependent on true knowledge of God. This has been lost in the fall.

Apostate GMs see humanity in the image of an idol. For the Greeks the soul was a formless, impersonal life principle caught in the stream of life.

The Orphics saw the soul as rational, invisible form and substance, which originated in heaven. It was characterised by theoretical and logical thought.

For the Greeks the temporal existence of humanity is dualistic: a perishable, material body and an immortal rational soul.

For the Christian the soul or spirit is the absolute central unity or heart of his existence – it is the focal point of existence.

common grace
The revelation of the fall touches the root and religious centre of human nature. It means apostasy from god and affected the whole of the temporal world.

Sin, or Satan, though does not have an existence of its own over against God the creator.

The Word became flesh in Jesus, he entered into the heart of human nature and bought about a radical redemption.

God upholds the fallen world through ‘common grace’ – grace given without distinction between the regenerate and apostate.

Common grace:
• curbs the effect of sin
• restrains fallen humanity
• upholds the ordinances of creation – even the most ungodly must bow before God’s decrees to see the positive effects of his own labours
• reveals itself in gifts and talents of individuals
• does not weaken the opposition (antithesis) between Christian and other GMs
• can’t be conceived of apart from Jesus
• goes on until the judgement
• guards against Christian pride, which leads to a rejection and fleeing from the world

review questions
1. Does nature exist apart from humanity?
2. In what ways can the effects of common grace be felt?

study questions
1. What does Dooyeweerd mean by ‘the whole of temporal order’?
2. What does Dooyeweerd mean by ‘heart’?
3. How does humanity make the ‘temporal existence’ of plants and animals ‘complete’?
4. Compare the Greek views of the soul with the Christian view.

summary

With Alexander the Great Greek culture became world culture. Alexander became worshipped as a god – and this became the foundation of the religious imperium idea. This imperium idea was well established when Alexander died and his empire eventually became Roman.
As the Roman empire expanded the Greek religious ground motive (RGM) influenced Roman culture.

the motive of power

Roman ancestor worship soon led Caligula to emperor worship. The Roman gods of state had their own sphere of competence and co-existed with the gods of home and hearth.

The motive of power and law pervaded Roman life.

The head of the Roman familia, the pater familias (the oldest male) had the power of life and death over the rest of the family, he could buy and sell the children and slaves under his jurisdiction.

public law and private law

When Rome became an empire there was the need for a more universal law (ius gentium). It mean that every free person had the status of a free subject.
Where could the basic principle of universal law come form? It couldn’t be based on family law or on the communal law. They looked to the Greek idea of natural law developed by the stoics. They discovered a principle that lies at the heart of civil law: freedom and equality of persons. This became a lasting influence on western law. This blessing was however, threatened by the Greek RGM. There was a sharp demarcation between the sphere of state and the sphere of individual freedom.

The Byzantine emperors (end of the third century BC) saw the end of the civil freedom of the individual and it was replaced by a state absolutization – everyone became a civil servant, the church became a state church.

review questions
1. In what sense is the ius gentium a gift of God’s common grace?

study questions
1. How was the ‘caesaropapacy’ a fruit of the Graeco-Roman RGM?

Summary

Dooyeweerd distinguishes four religious ground motives (RGMs):

• form/ matter
• creation, fall and redemption
• nature/ grace
• nature/ freedom

In this section he expounds the origins of the first of these the form/ matter motive.

the matter motive

The Greek form/ matter RGM is considered first as it operates both in the nature/ grace and the nature/ freedom RGMs.

The form/ matter Greek ground motive controlled Greek thought from the beginning. It arose in the conflict between the older nature religions and the newer Olympian culture religions.

The matter pole arose form the nature religions. There were many local variations but most involved the deification of a formless cyclical stream of life from which emerge plants, beasts and humans. Each matured, perished and came to life again. Time was cyclical and the forces were ruled by fate (Ananake).

The nature gods were fluid and invisible – there were a multiplicity of divine powers: eg, Gaia, Uranos, Demeter, Dionysis.

the form motive

The newer culture religions emphasized form, measure and harmony, it was the religion of the city states. They left the cycles of nature behind, their gods were immortal and Mount Olympus was their home.

The cultural religions were to the fore in the works of Homer and Hesiod.

Apollo was the supreme culture god.

dialectical tension

Dooyeweed lists three reasons why the attempts to reconcile these two poles failed. This failure to reconcile them led to a public private divide. In private they engaged in nature religion, but in public they worshipped the official Olympian gods.

The form/matter ground motive had a life even after the myths had been undermined. Blind fate governing the eternal flux and cycles stood over against the supernatural, rational and immortal form.

This diagram of Richard Russell’s illustrates Dooyeweerd’s discussion of the orphic view of human nature:

The rational, immortal soul originates in the heavens. The soul fell and became incarcerated in a material body. The soul was thus subject to the cycles of birth, death and rebirth, until it had been cleansed from the contamination of matter, then it could return to its true home.
The dialectical tension in Greek thought pushed it into two conflicting directions. They viewed nature sometimes as an invisible form and sometimes as a stream of life and sometimes as a combination of both.

This tension can also be seen in their view of the state. In the classical age the state was limited to a small area of the city-state (polis). The city-state was the bearer of the culture religion. Greeks were only seen as truly human as a free person in the city-state. All non-Greeks were barbarians. These notion were challenged by the idea of the natural equality of all peoples. The sophists declared ‘war’ on the idea of the city-state.
In Ionian culture, the idea of democracy that emerged was very different to modern ideas. Democracy was for the ‘free citizens’ only. The Greeks view of the state was totalitarian, it demanded the allegiance of the whole person.

review questions

1. How do the gods of the natural religions differ from the gods of the cultural religions?
2. Why couldn’t the form and matter forces be reconciled?

study questions
1. How do the natural religion and the cultural religions differ?
2. Is there still a difference between what people worship in private and what they do in public?
3. The orphic inscription has: "I am child of the earth and of the starry heaven / But heaven is my home". Is heaven the Christian’s home?
4. Is this form/ matter ground motive still operating today? In what ways?

summary

In this section Dooyeweerd distinguishes between the theoretical and the religious antithesis and between the theoretical and the religious dialectic. He sets the stage for a fuller discussion of the four religious ground motives (RGM).

the theoretical antithesis

Antithesis means ‘opposition’; it was later given a particular meaning in philosophy – particularly Hegelian philosophy.

the religious antithesis

However, in Christian thought the antithesis ‘pertains to the relation between the creature and his Creator’. It does not allow a higher synthesis – Christian and non-Christian starting points cannot be synthesised.

Philosophy needs a starting point which it derives from religion. Theoretical thought does not contain its own absolute starting point. The absolute is found only in religion. To find the true meaning of antithesis and to find the source of differences of opinion the religious ground motives of western civilization need to be considered. Every religion has a ground motive – a spiritual force that acts as the absolute central mainspring of society.

A groundmotive:

• is a spiritual force

• acts as the absolute cultural mainspring of society

• governs all of life’s expressions from the religious centre of life and directs them to a true or supposed origins of existence

• places an indelible stamp on the whole of culture and society

• has a spirit that is either the Spirit of God or that of an idol

• is a communal motive

• can never be the object for a special science

• can never be penetrated to their spiritual root by scientific analysis

• provides the point of departure for science – hence science can never be neutral with respect to religion.

 

the rgm of western culture

RGMs acquire their influence via cultural powers, such as the city-state (polis) of Greece, the Roman commonwealth (res publica) and later the emperor (sacrum imperium) of Rome, Christianity and modern humanism. In the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic (RC) church secured the role of leadership – all spheres in life were placed under the dominion of the church.

In the fifteenth century the Renaissance bought the church’s downfall. This led to the emergence of humanism. At the same time the Reformation challenged the RC’s powers. The RC church and the Reformation were driven back by humanism. In the Enlightenment humanism broke away from faith and pushed the church into a defensive mode for around three centuries. At the end of the nineteenth centurydecay entered into the humanistic world view – Marxism, Darwinism and Nietzsche’s superman pushed humanism into the defensive. World War I (WWI) accelerated the demise of optimistic humanism. The rise of fascism and Nazism was broken by WWII. Today spiritual confusion is everywhere.

the religious dialectic

Four RGMs have clashed. Three are dualistic with polar opposites that cannot be synthesied; they bear the seed of a religious dialectic.

Theoretcial antithesis is relative, it attempts to think through a logical opposition to its synthesis. Whereas a religious antithesis is absolute and cannot be synthesied. A religious dialectic is established by revelation founded in God’s word. The biblical GM is creation, fall and redemption. It is not a doctrine that can be uncovered by theology – one of the special sciences.

Idolatry deifies what is created, it absolutises an aspect of creation. Idolatry draws the human heart away from God.

A religious dialectic occurs when a RGM deifies a part of creation – a polar tension between the two extremes is set up. This breaks apart the GM, each of its motives claims absoluteness. It is impossible to synthesise them.

Another religious dialectic occurs when attempts are made to synthesis a Christian and another GM.

A closing warning: this is not merely a theoretical exercise.

 

Review questions

1. What are the four religious ground motives?

2. What are the leading powers in the different ground motives?

3. What does Dooyewerd mean by an absolutisation?

4. What is a pseudosynthesis?

5. What is the difference between a theoretical and a religious antithesis?

6. What is the difference between a theoretical and a religious dialectic?

 

Study questions

1. Compare and contrast culture, world view, religious ground motives and religion.