Roots of Western Culture

The next chapter ‘History, historicism, and norms’ focuses on just that.

For Dooyeweerd historicism is ‘ the fatal illness of our “dynamic” times. Dynamic is in “scare quotes” because it is a catch phrase of the historicist.

Historicism claims that all things are relative and historically determined; change is everything, certainty is nothing. It is a form of chronological snobbery.

Historicism permeates all of modern reflection on society – it is one of the ‘spiritual hosts of wickedness’ (Eph 6:12).

This first section looks at the historical aspect. It is important to draw a distinction between the historical aspect of temporal reality and history in the sense of concrete events, in what has happened. This confusion of the two concepts leads to historicism.

Concrete events, such as wars, famines, inventions and so on belong to reality that functions in every one of the modal aspects. They display many aspects that are not historical in character. We identify history with what has happened in our naïve pre-theoretical thought, in our ordinary experience. We focus on the structure of things, events, as totalities.

In the historical aspect, in the science of history, we focus on the abstract aspects of reality; it has a limited field of vision.

For example, if a man smoked a cigar yesterday, that event is in the past, but it is not a historical event. And yet it does have a historical aspect: in the Middle Ages people did not smoke, the introduction of tobacco was an historical event.

Other events are typically historical: the French revolution, the capitulation of Japan and Germany in the second world war. These events are formative in world history. Events become historically significant only in connection with their effects on human culture.
The distinction is made between not what occurs but how it occurs. The historian’s main concern is to grasp the core of the historical mode . Elsewhere Dooyeweerd has called this the modal meaning-nucleus To discover this he needs a criterion – one which historicism cannot provide.

The historical core is cultural formative activity. This is grounded in God’s creation order: the cultural mandate. Creation is subject to cultural development.

Greek culture deified the cultural. The gods were personifications of the cultural powers.
Modern historicism is dominated by the ground motive of humanism (nature and freedom). Culture is an unending historical development. It rejects any creational structures that make this development possible. Consequently, it cannot distinguish between reactionary and progressive tendencies historical development.

review questions
1.Why cannot historicism provide a criterion for the historical mode?
2. Why isn’t the science of history, the science of becoming?
3. Why did the Greeks deify the cultural?

study questions
1. Does the cultural mandate provide a carte blanche for the exploitation of the earth?
2. How can we distinguish between progressive and reactionary tendencies in historical development?

Kuyper had grasped that sphere sovereignty is a creational principle. And yet he still confused it with historically founded autonomy of parts in the body politic when he placed municipalities and provinces in his list of life spheres.

Differentiated life spheres such as the family, the school and economic enterprise can never be parts of the state.

The historicistic view has had an immense influence – it is important to avoid this absolutisation of the historical aspect of reality. One antidote is to expose the hidden ground motives that lie behind it.

From the historicist perspective the idea that there are principles rooted in the creation order is viewed as being undynamic and as not grasping the spirit of the age. The historicist view is more influential today than the scriptural view of history. But to find God’s ordinaces fo historical development our starting point must be the creation, fall and redemption ground motive.

There are (at least) two objections to this approach: the biblicist and the Barthian.

biblicism
The biblicist objection is that scriptural principles can come straight out the of the Bible – we have, for example, the ten commandments. Dooyeweerd answers this objection with a question: are all the laws for God’s creation order, such as laws that govern numerical and spatial relationships, physical and chemical phenomena also to be found in scripture? No, God has given us the task of discovering them.

barthianism
The Barthian responds: how can we know the original ordinances of creation? Sin has changed them so that now they are ordinances for sinful life.

Dooyeweerd asks: ‘Did God reveal himself as the creator so that we could brush this revelation aside?’ Creation should not be pushed to the background: Psalms, Job and Romans are all clear on the importance of creation.

Jesus himself uses creational ordinances for marriage in his discussion of divorce.

The fall has affected all of life but it has not as broad as creation; it does not alter the structures of reality of creation.

review questions
1. What is the difference between differentiated and undifferentiated states of society?
2. How does Dooyeweerd respond to the biblicist and Barthian objection?

study questions
1. How can we combat historicism today?
2. Does biblicism stifle cultural transformation?