Following is the second and final installment of an article by Professor Norman Shepherd, teacher of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
The Authority of the Written Word of God
Before consideration of the authority of the Word of Cod, a word may be said with respect to the inerrancy of Scripture. To speak of inerrancy at this point does not mean that the authority of Scripture is to be grounded in its inerrancy. The authority of Scripture is grounded in God Himself, the Author of Scripture. But just because it is His Word, it is an inerrant and infallible Word. For that reason inerrancy and authority are intimately bound up with one another. The concept of inerrancy has the advantage of stressing that the very text of Scripture is God’s own Word as distinct from all other texts. It is the divine Word given through human organs of revelation whereas other words are human words.
Such a view of the text of Scripture as authored by God and inerrant might be criticized as betraying a nature-grace dialectic. Indeed Dooyeweerd appears willing to incorporate the expression, “revealed truths of faith,” into his system, but rejects as Thomistic scholasticism the expression “supernatural revelation” (Philosophia Reformata, XXIII, 1958, 2). The question raised is whether the concept of inerrancy rests too much on a scholastic nature-grace dialectic, and whether it will prove essential in a view which distinguishes between power-word and text-word.
We may note in this connection [Dr. Arnold] De Graaff’s comment: “Generalizing we can say that we cannot deduce a history of the people of Israel from the O.T., just as little as we can reconstruct the life of Jesus from the Gospels” (Understanding the Scriptures, p. 11 ). De Graaff appears to do more than simply assert what has always been commonplace in Reformed theology, that the Bible does not furnish us with all of the detail which a modem historian or biographer should include in his writing. In commenting on the historical portions of Scripture he asserts: “To ask, therefore, whether or not these stories actually happened in every detail and in the order in which they are presented is to ask the wrong question” (p. 10). It is difficult to understand this statement in any other way than as implying that inerrancy is irrelevant to the writer’s view of Scripture with its distinction between text-word and power-word. It would also seem irrelevant to ask whether events of the stories happened at all, as long as the power of the word was brought to bear. We recall that De Graaff asks us to give attention to the kerygmatic nature of the Word of God which excludes the idea of Scripture as a collection of propositional truths. When the inerrancy of Scripture is conceived of as irrelevant for its authority, the very nature of the authority of Scripture as God’s Word to man is at stake.
Moving to a specific consideration of the authority of the Word of God, we observe again the desire on the part of the adherents of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea to distance themselves from the modern principle with its distinctive view of Scripture. We have seen how the modern principle destroys the authority of the written text. Now we are asking what happens to the authority of the written text in this new critical philosophy. Is there any evidence that the authority of the written text suffers a similar fate?
To begin, we may note that [Dr. Hendrik] Hart warns his readers to avoid the pitfall of modern theology which concludes from the revelational and witness character of the Bible that not the Bible, but the Word alone has authority. This view, he says, puts the Bible outside of our lives (The Challenge of Our Age, p. 120). The warning is well taken, but is in a sense a voice from the pit since in the previous paragraph the Bible has already been put outside of our lives by saying: “If the Word of God has indeed become so many sentences, or texts, or books, they have not one iota to say to us, since those sentences were never addressed to us in the first place, but to the Israelites.” The attitude toward the written Word of God which finds expression here is one which deprives the Bible of its authority in the sense in which the churches of the Reformed Reformation have understood that authority on the basis of the testimony of Scripture itself.
Secondly, we may note the charge of idolatry that has from time to time been directed against the Reformed view of Scripture as we find it formulated, for example, in the Westminster Confession of Faith. In 1964, Hart wrote an article under the title, “Can the Bible be an Idol?” (Sola Fide, XVIII 6; Sept., 1964, 3-10) in which he warned of the dangers involved in the confessional manner of speaking of the Bible as Holy Writ, as Divine Scripture, and as God’s Word. The danger lies in not realizing that the Bible can be called by these terms only in an analogical sense. The revealed Word, according to Hart, may never be identified with the Bible. Such identification turns the Bible into an idol.
The same line of thought was repeated by Paul Schrotenboer in his editorial, “The Bible, Word of Power,” in a recent issue of the International Reformed Bulletin (Jan./April, 1968). There the thesis is developed that the traditional Reformed view of Scripture is idolatrous because it ascribes to the Bible an absolute authority when it simply identifies the Bible with the Word of God. Schrotenboer insists that the Bible in isolation is not the Word of God; it is only a form of the Word of God, and only one form of the Word of God. Schrotenboer is not to be understood as saying simply that God not only made use of a book to reveal himself, but also revealed himself in other ways, or simply that the Bible must not be left on a shelf, but must be opened, read, and proclaimed. These observations are commonplace at all stages of the development of Reformed theology, but Schrotenboer claims to be offering a new view of Scripture. The newness arises from the distinction between text-word and power-word.
In terms of the Dooyeweerdian philosophical system, the Bible as book is the creational form in which we find the Word of God in the world. It may be regarded from a diversity of aspects. It is composed of words and sentences and therefore has a lingual aspect. It contains rules of conduct and therefore has an ethical aspect. It contains propositions and therefore has a logical aspect. But none of these aspects, or any aspect, or any combination of aspects of created reality may be absolutized. To do so is to make idols. Therefore to think of Scripture as an absolutely authoritative book which tells us, in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. and A. 3), “what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man,” is to make the Bible into an idol.
With the charge that the traditional Reformed view of Scripture leads to an idolizing of Scripture, the final authority of the written word of God is effectively evaded. Instead of looking to the Scriptures to find there what the Lord God requires of us, we must look through the Scriptures to another Word, the Word of God in the sense of power-word. Schrotenboer has misused the biblical image of the Bible as a light on our path to convey the same thought when he tells us that we must use the light but we must not stare into it.
Thirdly, we may take account once again of De Graaff’s statement: “What a terrible distortion to reduce this living Word of God to a collection of propositional truths and moral lessons and the knowledge of this Word to an intellectual understanding of doctrines” (Understanding the Scriptures, p. 18). ]n effect, he is saying that the Scriptures do not principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.
Therefore we are informed that “All the ordinances in the Scriptures are specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great commandment” (p. 31). Even the ten commandments are not commandments but words, or specifications of a central religious Directive (p. 35). And again: “All the other ordinances are nothing more than concrete outworkings, positivizations of this Directive within a particular culture in a particular period of history” (p. 35). Thus the Bible is not designed as the final revelation to instruct us directly today in what is well-pleasing unto God, but only and specifically tells us what the Word of God required of a limited number of people living long ago under their own peculiar historical and cultural circumstances. It functions for us, therefore, only as a guide, or as an example, to assist us to discover for ourselves or more accurately, to determine for ourselves, what the Word of God requires of us here and now. To illustrate, the fact that Romans 13 requires obedience to the civil magistrate as a minister of God for good does not require me to stop for a red light if I determine for myself in a given situation that not stopping will better fulfill the central love commandment. The obvious point of contact with modem Situation Ethics is undeniable even though a refutation of Situation Ethics is attempted on other grounds.
If the ordinances of Scripture are but specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great commandment, may we not also argue that the doctrines of Scripture are but specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great doctrine? ]ndeed, is that not precisely the relation between text-word and power-word? Dooyeweerd warns expressly that the ground-motive of Scripture, namely creation, fall into sin, redemption through Jesus Christ, in the communion of the Holy Spirit, must not be confused with the ecclesiastical articles of faith which can be made the object of dogmatic theological reflection (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 42). He points in particular to the fundamental difference between the divine creative deeds and the genetical process occurring within the created temporal order as a result of God’s work of creation (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 150). Are we not also compelled to ask whether there is not a fundamental difference between the divine redemptive deeds, and what Jesus of Nazareth did on the cross two thousand years ago? A question of this kind gives an indication of the far-reaching problems involved in this view of Scripture which distinguishes in so basic a way between text-word and power-word.
We cannot help but observe that the wedge driven between the Word of God and the Bible has borne fruit within the circle of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea not wholly unlike what has been observed in modern theology in general.
The Meaning of Scripturally-Directed Scientific Study
Obviously all that has been said concerning the difference between text-word and power-word has its consequences for scripturally directed scientific study. The precise Question here is as to the nature of the authority of Scripture for the various branches of scientific study including not only the natural sciences but also the humanities. It belongs to the Reformed faith as such, and not simply to the school of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, to insist that the authority of Scripture be brought to bear on al1 areas of human endeavor and not simply to an artificially limited religious area. This was the great vision of Calvin who was able to articulate it without the apparatus of a particular philosophy, as Dooyeweerd himself points out (Philosophia Reformata XXIII, 1958, 72). All of life is religious. Every moment must be lived in conscious subjection to the authority of Jesus Christ.
When the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea attempts to develop its system self-consciously under the direction of Scripture, and to assist the other sciences to fulfill the same calling this attempt cannot but be respected. It is an endeavor which appeals to the genuinely Reformed heart and doubtless accounts, in part, at least, for the appeal of this philosophy especially among Christian college and university students. However, everything now depends upon what is meant by scriptural directedness.
For the sake of convenience we may distinguish between a “naive understanding” and a “sophisticated understanding” of scriptural directedness.
A naive understanding would be that Scripture gives us certain truths or laws which are axiomatic, or better, divinely revealed and therefore authoritative for the work of the scientist or scholar. For example, the sociologlst knows from Scripture that the family structure is, has been, and always will be, an inviolable divine ordinance. He must take account of that in his historical study and creative work. We may say in general that it was along these lines that Abraham Kuyper conceived of the relation between Scripture and science in his monumental Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, the heart of which has been translated into English as Principles of Sacred Theology.
But it is also this conception with which the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea has broken when it speaks of scriptural directedness. In particular we may note that the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea does not have the same conception of theology that Kuyper has in his Principles of Sacred Theology. This is no secret, but it is popularly overlooked in the enthusiasm for a scripturally directed science. Simply to lump Kuyper and Dooyeweerd together does no justice to either of them.
In the previously mentioned article on the relation between philosophy and theology, Dooyeweerd acknowledges his indebtedness to the Calvinistic reawakening at the end of the last century, but in the New Critique also points out that Kuyper did not advance beyond a “neo-scholastic-Christian” philosophy. Dooyeweerd himself offers a “Re-formed Christian” philosophy in which the biblical motive power of the Christian religion is operative so as to accomplish an inner reformation of philosophic thought (New Critique of Theoretical Thought, I, 524 f.).
This sophisticated view of scriptural directedness operates with the distinction between text-word and power-word. All scientific endeavor is under the authority of the Word of Cod as power-word. That is, the scientist and the community of scientists are driven on in their labors by the power of divine word-revelation. The Word of God as text-word, however, functions authoritatively only in the pistical [pistis—Greek word for faith] aspect of human experience.
What is in view can be illustrated by reference once again to the doctrine of creation. God’s creative deed as central revelation or power~word has direct bearing on all scientific endeavor, and therefore has bearing upon the work of the geologist or biologist. But creation as an article of the Christian faith, or as it is described in the early chapters of Genesis, is not the concern of the geologist or biologist as scientist. As scientist he is working on another aspect of reality, not the faith-aspect which is the domain of the theologian. The theologian therefore cannot tell the geologist that he must accept as divinely revealed truth in his work as geologist, that there were successive acts of creation in the temporal order.
Similarly, the theologian and the philosopher have different spheres of labor. The work of the theologian is to study the Bible as a faith-document, and the confession as articles of the Christian faith. The philosopher “has the indispensable task of giving us an insight into the inner nature and structure of the different modal aspects of our temporal horizon of experience find to give us a theoretical view of their natural relation and inner coherence” (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 130). Together they are subject to the central revelation of Scripture as power-word; but this central revelation, or ground-motive of creation, fall into sin, redemption through Jesus Christ, in the communion of the Holy Spirit, is not open to theoretical investigation by either the theologian or philosopher, or anyone else.
To illustrate how this works out, when K. J. Popma objected to Dooyeweerd’s formulation concerning a pistical or faith modality on the grounds that Scripture did not employ the concept of faith as Dooyewe.erd did, Dooyeweerd responded by saying he thought that they had both, as adherents of the new philosophy, overcome this method of reasoning (Philosophia Reformata, XXIII, 1958, 70). That is, one may not object to a philosophical formulation on the basis of an exegesis of certain passages of Scripture.
Another illustration may be found in the opposition to the theory of evolution among adherents of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. It appears that the opposition does not arise so much from an exegesis of Genesis 2:7, as from certain philosophical premises which are an integral part of the system, and which are violated if the theory of evolution is adopted.
Thus the theologian as theologian has nothing to say to the philosopher as philosopher. Therefore at the beginning of the article we anticipated the object.ion that could be raised to a title which proposed as a topic, a theologian’s reaction to a philosophical formulation. The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea continually reminds us that theology must not be allowed to reign as queen over the sciences, and in particular must not reign over philosophy as it did under the influence of the scholastic nature-grace motive.
On the other hand, philosophy, because of its special position as the science of the sciences, as the science which deals with the mutual relation and inner coherence of the sciences, has a great deal to say to theology. To be sure Dooyeweerd writes: “However, Christian philosophy does not have the task and competence to go into the dogmatic and exegetical problems of theology,” but this is immediately followed by an all-important exceptive clause: “except insofar as the philosophical and central religious fundamentals of theology as a theoretical science are at issue” (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 148). It is difficult to see how there could be any points where the “central religious fundamentals” were not at issue, and easy to see that the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea would therefore have a great deal to say in the area of theology; and we might add, to say with authority as prophetic mediator between the Word of God as central revelation and Word of God as object of theoretical study. Whereas under the nature-grace motive of scholastic philosophy it was theology that reigned over philosophy. under the creation-fall-redemption-communion motive of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, it is philosophy that reigns over theology. Or could we say simply that the nature-grace dialectic still pervades its influence even in a philosophy that has in principle broken it?
Scriptural directedness in this “sophisticated view” as opposed to the “naive view” of Kuyper comes perilously close to meaning philosophical directedness, and when that happens we are moving away from a truly Reformational and Reformed approach to scientific study. Every philosophical imperialism is antithetical to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
The Authority of the Written Word of God
Before consideration of the authority of the Word of Cod, a word may be said with respect to the inerrancy of Scripture. To speak of inerrancy at this point does not mean that the authority of Scripture is to be grounded in its inerrancy. The authority of Scripture is grounded in God Himself, the Author of Scripture. But just because it is His Word, it is an inerrant and infallible Word. For that reason inerrancy and authority are intimately bound up with one another. The concept of inerrancy has the advantage of stressing that the very text of Scripture is God’s own Word as distinct from all other texts. It is the divine Word given through human organs of revelation whereas other words are human words.
Such a view of the text of Scripture as authored by God and inerrant might be criticized as betraying a nature-grace dialectic. Indeed Dooyeweerd appears willing to incorporate the expression, “revealed truths of faith,” into his system, but rejects as Thomistic scholasticism the expression “supernatural revelation” (Philosophia Reformata, XXIII, 1958, 2). The question raised is whether the concept of inerrancy rests too much on a scholastic nature-grace dialectic, and whether it will prove essential in a view which distinguishes between power-word and text-word.
We may note in this connection [Dr. Arnold] De Graaff’s comment: “Generalizing we can say that we cannot deduce a history of the people of Israel from the O.T., just as little as we can reconstruct the life of Jesus from the Gospels” (Understanding the Scriptures, p. 11 ). De Graaff appears to do more than simply assert what has always been commonplace in Reformed theology, that the Bible does not furnish us with all of the detail which a modem historian or biographer should include in his writing. In commenting on the historical portions of Scripture he asserts: “To ask, therefore, whether or not these stories actually happened in every detail and in the order in which they are presented is to ask the wrong question” (p. 10). It is difficult to understand this statement in any other way than as implying that inerrancy is irrelevant to the writer’s view of Scripture with its distinction between text-word and power-word. It would also seem irrelevant to ask whether events of the stories happened at all, as long as the power of the word was brought to bear. We recall that De Graaff asks us to give attention to the kerygmatic nature of the Word of God which excludes the idea of Scripture as a collection of propositional truths. When the inerrancy of Scripture is conceived of as irrelevant for its authority, the very nature of the authority of Scripture as God’s Word to man is at stake.
Moving to a specific consideration of the authority of the Word of God, we observe again the desire on the part of the adherents of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea to distance themselves from the modern principle with its distinctive view of Scripture. We have seen how the modern principle destroys the authority of the written text. Now we are asking what happens to the authority of the written text in this new critical philosophy. Is there any evidence that the authority of the written text suffers a similar fate?
To begin, we may note that [Dr. Hendrik] Hart warns his readers to avoid the pitfall of modern theology which concludes from the revelational and witness character of the Bible that not the Bible, but the Word alone has authority. This view, he says, puts the Bible outside of our lives (The Challenge of Our Age, p. 120). The warning is well taken, but is in a sense a voice from the pit since in the previous paragraph the Bible has already been put outside of our lives by saying: “If the Word of God has indeed become so many sentences, or texts, or books, they have not one iota to say to us, since those sentences were never addressed to us in the first place, but to the Israelites.” The attitude toward the written Word of God which finds expression here is one which deprives the Bible of its authority in the sense in which the churches of the Reformed Reformation have understood that authority on the basis of the testimony of Scripture itself.
Secondly, we may note the charge of idolatry that has from time to time been directed against the Reformed view of Scripture as we find it formulated, for example, in the Westminster Confession of Faith. In 1964, Hart wrote an article under the title, “Can the Bible be an Idol?” (Sola Fide, XVIII 6; Sept., 1964, 3-10) in which he warned of the dangers involved in the confessional manner of speaking of the Bible as Holy Writ, as Divine Scripture, and as God’s Word. The danger lies in not realizing that the Bible can be called by these terms only in an analogical sense. The revealed Word, according to Hart, may never be identified with the Bible. Such identification turns the Bible into an idol.
The same line of thought was repeated by Paul Schrotenboer in his editorial, “The Bible, Word of Power,” in a recent issue of the International Reformed Bulletin (Jan./April, 1968). There the thesis is developed that the traditional Reformed view of Scripture is idolatrous because it ascribes to the Bible an absolute authority when it simply identifies the Bible with the Word of God. Schrotenboer insists that the Bible in isolation is not the Word of God; it is only a form of the Word of God, and only one form of the Word of God. Schrotenboer is not to be understood as saying simply that God not only made use of a book to reveal himself, but also revealed himself in other ways, or simply that the Bible must not be left on a shelf, but must be opened, read, and proclaimed. These observations are commonplace at all stages of the development of Reformed theology, but Schrotenboer claims to be offering a new view of Scripture. The newness arises from the distinction between text-word and power-word.
In terms of the Dooyeweerdian philosophical system, the Bible as book is the creational form in which we find the Word of God in the world. It may be regarded from a diversity of aspects. It is composed of words and sentences and therefore has a lingual aspect. It contains rules of conduct and therefore has an ethical aspect. It contains propositions and therefore has a logical aspect. But none of these aspects, or any aspect, or any combination of aspects of created reality may be absolutized. To do so is to make idols. Therefore to think of Scripture as an absolutely authoritative book which tells us, in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. and A. 3), “what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man,” is to make the Bible into an idol.
With the charge that the traditional Reformed view of Scripture leads to an idolizing of Scripture, the final authority of the written word of God is effectively evaded. Instead of looking to the Scriptures to find there what the Lord God requires of us, we must look through the Scriptures to another Word, the Word of God in the sense of power-word. Schrotenboer has misused the biblical image of the Bible as a light on our path to convey the same thought when he tells us that we must use the light but we must not stare into it.
Thirdly, we may take account once again of De Graaff’s statement: “What a terrible distortion to reduce this living Word of God to a collection of propositional truths and moral lessons and the knowledge of this Word to an intellectual understanding of doctrines” (Understanding the Scriptures, p. 18). ]n effect, he is saying that the Scriptures do not principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.
Therefore we are informed that “All the ordinances in the Scriptures are specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great commandment” (p. 31). Even the ten commandments are not commandments but words, or specifications of a central religious Directive (p. 35). And again: “All the other ordinances are nothing more than concrete outworkings, positivizations of this Directive within a particular culture in a particular period of history” (p. 35). Thus the Bible is not designed as the final revelation to instruct us directly today in what is well-pleasing unto God, but only and specifically tells us what the Word of God required of a limited number of people living long ago under their own peculiar historical and cultural circumstances. It functions for us, therefore, only as a guide, or as an example, to assist us to discover for ourselves or more accurately, to determine for ourselves, what the Word of God requires of us here and now. To illustrate, the fact that Romans 13 requires obedience to the civil magistrate as a minister of God for good does not require me to stop for a red light if I determine for myself in a given situation that not stopping will better fulfill the central love commandment. The obvious point of contact with modem Situation Ethics is undeniable even though a refutation of Situation Ethics is attempted on other grounds.
If the ordinances of Scripture are but specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great commandment, may we not also argue that the doctrines of Scripture are but specifications, examples, crosscuts, and depth dimensions of the great doctrine? ]ndeed, is that not precisely the relation between text-word and power-word? Dooyeweerd warns expressly that the ground-motive of Scripture, namely creation, fall into sin, redemption through Jesus Christ, in the communion of the Holy Spirit, must not be confused with the ecclesiastical articles of faith which can be made the object of dogmatic theological reflection (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 42). He points in particular to the fundamental difference between the divine creative deeds and the genetical process occurring within the created temporal order as a result of God’s work of creation (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 150). Are we not also compelled to ask whether there is not a fundamental difference between the divine redemptive deeds, and what Jesus of Nazareth did on the cross two thousand years ago? A question of this kind gives an indication of the far-reaching problems involved in this view of Scripture which distinguishes in so basic a way between text-word and power-word.
We cannot help but observe that the wedge driven between the Word of God and the Bible has borne fruit within the circle of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea not wholly unlike what has been observed in modern theology in general.
The Meaning of Scripturally-Directed Scientific Study
Obviously all that has been said concerning the difference between text-word and power-word has its consequences for scripturally directed scientific study. The precise Question here is as to the nature of the authority of Scripture for the various branches of scientific study including not only the natural sciences but also the humanities. It belongs to the Reformed faith as such, and not simply to the school of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, to insist that the authority of Scripture be brought to bear on al1 areas of human endeavor and not simply to an artificially limited religious area. This was the great vision of Calvin who was able to articulate it without the apparatus of a particular philosophy, as Dooyeweerd himself points out (Philosophia Reformata XXIII, 1958, 72). All of life is religious. Every moment must be lived in conscious subjection to the authority of Jesus Christ.
When the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea attempts to develop its system self-consciously under the direction of Scripture, and to assist the other sciences to fulfill the same calling this attempt cannot but be respected. It is an endeavor which appeals to the genuinely Reformed heart and doubtless accounts, in part, at least, for the appeal of this philosophy especially among Christian college and university students. However, everything now depends upon what is meant by scriptural directedness.
For the sake of convenience we may distinguish between a “naive understanding” and a “sophisticated understanding” of scriptural directedness.
A naive understanding would be that Scripture gives us certain truths or laws which are axiomatic, or better, divinely revealed and therefore authoritative for the work of the scientist or scholar. For example, the sociologlst knows from Scripture that the family structure is, has been, and always will be, an inviolable divine ordinance. He must take account of that in his historical study and creative work. We may say in general that it was along these lines that Abraham Kuyper conceived of the relation between Scripture and science in his monumental Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, the heart of which has been translated into English as Principles of Sacred Theology.
But it is also this conception with which the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea has broken when it speaks of scriptural directedness. In particular we may note that the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea does not have the same conception of theology that Kuyper has in his Principles of Sacred Theology. This is no secret, but it is popularly overlooked in the enthusiasm for a scripturally directed science. Simply to lump Kuyper and Dooyeweerd together does no justice to either of them.
In the previously mentioned article on the relation between philosophy and theology, Dooyeweerd acknowledges his indebtedness to the Calvinistic reawakening at the end of the last century, but in the New Critique also points out that Kuyper did not advance beyond a “neo-scholastic-Christian” philosophy. Dooyeweerd himself offers a “Re-formed Christian” philosophy in which the biblical motive power of the Christian religion is operative so as to accomplish an inner reformation of philosophic thought (New Critique of Theoretical Thought, I, 524 f.).
This sophisticated view of scriptural directedness operates with the distinction between text-word and power-word. All scientific endeavor is under the authority of the Word of Cod as power-word. That is, the scientist and the community of scientists are driven on in their labors by the power of divine word-revelation. The Word of God as text-word, however, functions authoritatively only in the pistical [pistis—Greek word for faith] aspect of human experience.
What is in view can be illustrated by reference once again to the doctrine of creation. God’s creative deed as central revelation or power~word has direct bearing on all scientific endeavor, and therefore has bearing upon the work of the geologist or biologist. But creation as an article of the Christian faith, or as it is described in the early chapters of Genesis, is not the concern of the geologist or biologist as scientist. As scientist he is working on another aspect of reality, not the faith-aspect which is the domain of the theologian. The theologian therefore cannot tell the geologist that he must accept as divinely revealed truth in his work as geologist, that there were successive acts of creation in the temporal order.
Similarly, the theologian and the philosopher have different spheres of labor. The work of the theologian is to study the Bible as a faith-document, and the confession as articles of the Christian faith. The philosopher “has the indispensable task of giving us an insight into the inner nature and structure of the different modal aspects of our temporal horizon of experience find to give us a theoretical view of their natural relation and inner coherence” (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 130). Together they are subject to the central revelation of Scripture as power-word; but this central revelation, or ground-motive of creation, fall into sin, redemption through Jesus Christ, in the communion of the Holy Spirit, is not open to theoretical investigation by either the theologian or philosopher, or anyone else.
To illustrate how this works out, when K. J. Popma objected to Dooyeweerd’s formulation concerning a pistical or faith modality on the grounds that Scripture did not employ the concept of faith as Dooyewe.erd did, Dooyeweerd responded by saying he thought that they had both, as adherents of the new philosophy, overcome this method of reasoning (Philosophia Reformata, XXIII, 1958, 70). That is, one may not object to a philosophical formulation on the basis of an exegesis of certain passages of Scripture.
Another illustration may be found in the opposition to the theory of evolution among adherents of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. It appears that the opposition does not arise so much from an exegesis of Genesis 2:7, as from certain philosophical premises which are an integral part of the system, and which are violated if the theory of evolution is adopted.
Thus the theologian as theologian has nothing to say to the philosopher as philosopher. Therefore at the beginning of the article we anticipated the object.ion that could be raised to a title which proposed as a topic, a theologian’s reaction to a philosophical formulation. The Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea continually reminds us that theology must not be allowed to reign as queen over the sciences, and in particular must not reign over philosophy as it did under the influence of the scholastic nature-grace motive.
On the other hand, philosophy, because of its special position as the science of the sciences, as the science which deals with the mutual relation and inner coherence of the sciences, has a great deal to say to theology. To be sure Dooyeweerd writes: “However, Christian philosophy does not have the task and competence to go into the dogmatic and exegetical problems of theology,” but this is immediately followed by an all-important exceptive clause: “except insofar as the philosophical and central religious fundamentals of theology as a theoretical science are at issue” (Twilight of Western Thought, p. 148). It is difficult to see how there could be any points where the “central religious fundamentals” were not at issue, and easy to see that the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea would therefore have a great deal to say in the area of theology; and we might add, to say with authority as prophetic mediator between the Word of God as central revelation and Word of God as object of theoretical study. Whereas under the nature-grace motive of scholastic philosophy it was theology that reigned over philosophy. under the creation-fall-redemption-communion motive of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, it is philosophy that reigns over theology. Or could we say simply that the nature-grace dialectic still pervades its influence even in a philosophy that has in principle broken it?
Scriptural directedness in this “sophisticated view” as opposed to the “naive view” of Kuyper comes perilously close to meaning philosophical directedness, and when that happens we are moving away from a truly Reformational and Reformed approach to scientific study. Every philosophical imperialism is antithetical to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.