Category: epistemology

Greek Philosophy held that truth was arrived at dialectically by putting form and matter in dialectical tension. Both form and matter were each seen as being equally ultimate and as being limiting concepts to one another. In other words, if you had only form you would lose matter and if you had only matter you would lose form so there was a need to force these two equally ultimate opposites to be in relation to one another out of philosophical necessity.

In Greek thought “form” is the structure or essence of an idea and
“matter” is the substance or content of that idea. In Greek thought the forms existed in an “upper story” of reality while matter existed in the everyday world which was considered the “lower story.” Forms were the realms of the universal ideals of reality while matter was the particular instantiations of those ideals. For example the ideal of a “Horse” existed in the universal upper story of “forms” but the particular examples of horses existed in the lower story. So, the forms existed in a non-corporeal ideal realm and served as the antitype realities to which the imperfect types in the realm of matter could alone find their correspondence.

The problem that philosophy sought to handle was how “form” and “matter” could be brought into relation to one another. How could one get the particular to participate in the universal or how could one get the universal into the particular?

Aristotle sought to use dialecticism to bring the two in contact with one another. Refusing to surrender form to matter or matter to form Aristotle demanded dialectical tension between the two, emphasizing a unity arrived at via anthropocentric means. The idea of dialectical tension is explained in putting opposites in relation to one another in such a way that they can each satisfy the extreme of the other.

What Aristotle did, following Plato, was to objectify the previously subjective State to serve as his “form/idea/mind or spirit,” meanwhile the State, as the basic agency in society, and serving as the saving order, was the Aristotelian Universal that was brought into dialectical tension with individual people and the natural world which served as the matter to the States form. In doing so individuals and the natural world found their meaning in the State. In the Universal state as form all particulars (matter) lived, moved and had their being. In the State as Universal form the particulars of the natural world (matter) would be brought into meaningful relation.

In all this Aristotle emphasized the particulars (matter) more than the previous platonic arrangement which found the universals (form/ideas/spirit) emphasized over the particulars. Remember, this arrangement for both Plato and Aristotle was dialectical and as such the exact point of tension could indeed easily differ.

The difference between Plato and Aristotle is this regard is captured in the painting “School of Athens” by Raphael.

https://www.alamy.com/plato-and-aristotle-school-of-athens-raphael-image386295694.html?imageid=9A29E562-981A-448A-80EF-C089055AE247&pn=1&searchId=2e8a3c87a8c90b8ab541d104d9d4cdbc&searchtype=0

You will notice in this painting that Plato is seen pointing upwards. Raphael is communicating here that Plato’s emphasis is on the Universals (the Forms). On the other hand Aristotle is pointing downwards, communicating his preference for matter (particulars). Both kept these in dialectical tension with each serving as a limiting concept of the other.

Plato, like Aristotle after him, stipulated that the State was where unity was realized between form and matter. The implication of both Platonism and Aristotelianism was a totalistic state that today we might call a “totalitarian order” where “everything is inside the state and nothing is outside the state.”

Because Plato emphasized  the universals (forms) there was sure to follow those who would out Plato, Plato, and sure enough the neo-Platonists would in time emphasize the forms so much that the universals began to lose contact with the particulars (matter). Because of this the neo-Platonists ended up saying that matter didn’t matter and so began to despise the particulars (flesh, nature, the corporeal) and became aesthetics. As in the church this was the base of the Gnostic heresy that so early and so often bedeviled the Church. These Gnostics, as inspired by philosophical platonism, would tend to disregard the flesh and would flee into the desert to deny themselves of any creature comforts. These desert fathers would go without bathing, without eating, and without sleep in order to prove how superior they were in holiness. Later we read of the traveling flagellants who, smitten by this platonic/Gnostic virus, would flagellate themselves with whips till their bodies bled.

This Gnostic impulse has traveled with the Church throughout the centuries. One can locate it not only in many of the Early Church Fathers but one sees it in Church History in the Bogomils, the Albigensians, the Cathars and the Anabaptists. One sees it in the Church today in many expressions of Pietism and it is seen in the Reformed world in the teaching of Radical Two Kingdom theology. Whenever you find the insistence that there is a hard impenetrable barrier between a “common realm” and a “grace realm” there you find Platonic thinking on Form and Matter happening. Whenever you find the Anabaptist warning their children about “the English” or about the worldliness of automation there you find Platonic thinking.

Biblical Christianity alone solves this problem. In Biblical Christianity God is the Form that gives definition to all matter and by knowing God in Christ in His Word we increasingly, but never perfectly, come to know the realm of matter as God knows the realm of matter. If, “in God we live and move and have our being,” then we have the beginning point for all true knowledge of matter since God is the creator. So, for Christians God is the form that gives meaning to all matter and only by knowing God in His Word can we know particulars. God is not only Creator and Redeemer but He is also the meaning maker and meaning keeper. Nothing can be genuinely known of the realm of matter without knowing the God of the Bible. So, we see here why Francis Schaeffer taught that “mind (Form) is primary.” We might say that God is the form that forms all matter. Christians, thus, have no need to reason dialectically having a univocal point of contact for all our analogical thinking.

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“The Western mind has turned away from the contemplation of the absolute and the eternal to the knowledge of the particular and the contingent. It has made man the measure of all things and has sought to emancipate human life from its dependence on the supernatural. Instead of the whole intellectual and social order being subordinated to spiritual principles, every practice has declared its independence, and we see politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power.

And these tendencies were not confined to the secular side of life; they made themselves felt in religion also. Religion came to be regarded as one among a competing number of interests of life, which had no jurisdiction over the rest. And as it lost its universal authority, it lost it’s universal vision; it became sectionalized and rationalized with the rest of European life. The ancient unity of Christendom fell asunder into a mass of warring sects, which were so absorbed in their internecine feuds that they were hardly conscious of their loss of spiritual vision and social authority.”

Christopher Dawson
Christianity & The New Age – p. 59
Published 1931

1.) When Dawson notes that the Western mind is preoccupied with the particular and contingent over and against the universal and eternal he points out a huge problem. The Western mind preferring the particular and contingent over the universal and eternal is like someone stumbling upon a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle scattered all over a house with no box top in order to know what the various pieces are supposed to construct. One cannot know particulars without knowing the universal. Neither can one know the universal without knowing the particulars. Only Christianity can answer this with its teaching of God being both One and Many (Trinitarian) so that the One and the Many condition one another (the doctrine of perichoresis). This idea of the One and Many is both eternal and temporal. Because God is eternally one and many the temporal order is likewise it be understood as one and many. However, if the God of the Bible is not presupposed then modern man has an epistemological problem as the temporal one and many (universals and particulars) have no way of coming into a proper relationship with one another. When the Western mind gave up, as Dawson notes, its dependence on knowing the particular and contingent by knowing the universal and eternal the Western mind gave up knowing. Now, it took time for that agnosticism of knowing to reach full bloom but philosophically the rise of Nihilism, Existentialism, Post-modernism, and post-post Modernism all have been expressions and outcomes of what Dawson was seeing already in 1931. Indeed, Existentialism was in its heyday in the 1930s.

2.) When Dawson notes that “politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power,” we find the foundation of why our University system is no longer worthy of the name “University.” When began, the University (as the word indicates) insisted that there was a unity that could make sense of the diverse disciplines one could find at University. Modern man has abandoned the God of the Bible and His revelation as being that which gives unity to a diversity of knowledge. Because of that abandonment Western man has become schizoid man – he has no unity. Because there is no longer a unifying field of knowledge (i.e.- Theology) If one goes to modern Universities one will find the different departments at each other’s throats. For example the Mathematical department and the Science departments are at war with one another over the issue of whether biological evolution is even possible.

However, even in the Church realm there is strong advocacy that matters like politics, economics, science, and art should organize themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power. Dooyeweerd’s school for example insists that none of the various disciplines are dependent upon the common discipline. Likewise, Radical Two Kingdom theology insists that disciplines like those mentioned (politics, economics, etc.) should not even ever be considered “Christian.” They are their own realities that are absent one organizing unitary principle that gives them a stable transcendent unity. Indeed, R2K goes so far as to say that because there is no unitary principle that brings all disciplines under the God of the Bible’s authority that Christian ministers are wrong (in sin) to speak a “thus saith the Lord” in the realms of politics, economics, science, art, education, etc.

3.) In the mad rush to disenchant the world the results has been there is no longer any sacred authority to speak to all of life and all the parts of life. What the “conservative” “Christian” “faith” of the first part of the 21st century has done is to have emptied the world of God’s authority, and having emptied the world of God’s authority the world has become disenchanted and completely desacralized. By insisting that the Church alone is the realm of the sacred and the enchanted the modern Christian Church has created schizoid man — a man divided against himself. Dualistic man. Instead of speaking of the Church as the “holy of holies,” with everything else outside of the Church finding itself “holy” in light of the Church faithfully holding forth the Word of God over every area of life the Church now insists that it alone is Holy (sacred — realm of grace) while everything else is non-holy (unclean).

Of course, as the saying goes, nature hates a vacuum. Consequently, where the Church has abdicated its role in providing a unitary field of truth, other contestants have sought to provide that role. If the Church will not provide a unitary field of truth based on the theology that overflow from God’s Revelation then sex or science or meaninglessness, or currently, the push towards Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanist constructs, will seek to provide that unitary field of truth. Christians retreating from the idea that Christian theology is the Queen of the Sciences will find that other ugly bitch Queens will arise to steal the sceptre and rule in a vile way.

All of this explains why we are seeing such a departure from the conservative Church. The conservative Church has no answers for modern man. It is completely irrelevant and to be honest I don’t know who I feel more sorry for … for those who don’t attend or for those who do attend.

We continue to deal with the problem, in our current setting, of people in the “conservative” “Reformed” “Churches” who desire to relativize the Scriptures by creating a hard sacred vs. secular divide. This has been most handily and readily captured by Dr. D. G. Hart’s constant blathering about the need to live the “hyphenated life.” By this, Dr. D. G. Hart means, that some of life is to be placed and lived in one container that is dualistically distinct from other portions of life that are placed in lived in a different container. These separate containers are called “sacred” and “secular.”

This mindset is being openly pursued again especially by the Thomists who seek to neatly divide life into a natural realm and a sacred realm. Dr. Stephen Wolfe is leading the way in this resurgence of classical Thomistic thought as among Reformed thought leaders. However, there are variants that exist today on this Thomistic schematic and the variants are so pronounced that the fellow travelers in the Thomistic thought world are often at each other’s throats.

There are two variants to the straight up Thomism that is practiced by Dr. Wolfe and his followers. The first is not seen as much though a recent publication by Willem Ouweneel, “The World Is Christ’s: A Critique of Two Kingdoms Theology,” was an example of the thought of Herman Dooyeweerd, a Dutch Theologian who lived from 1894-1977.  In Dooyeweerdian thought (Cosmonomic-ism) reality was dichotomized into variant modal spheres each having their own distinct laws. In such a manner theology proper remains a distinct discipline largely unrelated to other modal realms of reality (eg. Law, Politics, Art, Education, Sociology, etc.) which instead find their own trajectory as anchored in their own distinct modal beginning points. The second variant to straight up 100 proof Thomism is what is being offered by the Escondido Westminster West chaps. This has come to be known as Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2K). In R2K, the beginning inspiration, Meredith Kline, dichotomized and dispensationalized the canonical authority of Scripture by positing that both between and within the Old and New covenant discontinuity was to be presupposed when reading the whole text as opposed to continuity. In such a fashion sundry dichotomies were invented in order to sustain a theology that demanded Hart’s “Hyphenated life.”

Dr. Greg Bahnsen analyzed Kline’s “theology” in this manner;

“In the latter case (speaking of Kline’s offerings), the moral authority of certain elements of Scripture is arbitrarily dismissed on the basis of separating (without conceptual cogency or exegetical justification) faith-norms from life-norms, individual norms from communal norms, and ‘common grace’ principles from ‘eschatological intrusion’ principles – implying that the most explicit biblical directions about political ethics may not be utilized today.” 

Dr. Greg Bahnsen 
The Structure of Biblical Authority

In both Dooyeweerd and in Kline a variant of Thomistic thinking is applied that leaves men as being the autonomous and sovereign authority in determining standards and principles for all areas of life except for the portions of life designated as “sacred.”

It is humorous to see these different schools engaged in their intramural struggles over which variant of Thomism is going to be embraced. Ouweneel wrote his book against R2K and R2K is forever denouncing Dr. Stephen Wolfe and his straight up 100 proof Thomism. Wolfe vs. R2K is especially entertaining because they both and each appeal to the same Natural Law standard in order to prove that the other is in error over their respective uses of Natural Law.

Of course the non-Thomistic variant that wars against both Cosmonomic theology and Radical Two Kingdom theology is that Christianity that was embraced by the Reformers as seen in Scriptures, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and as seen in the Sermons by John Calvin from the book of Deuteronomy. This line of thought has been dubbed “Theonomy” or “Reconstructionism” but it would be better to just label it as “Historic Christianity.” Biblical Christians deny a hard sacred sacred vs. secular divide insisting to the contrary that all of life is Holy unto God while at the same time admitting that what might be called “the common things of life” are made holy when they are handled in terms of God’s authority and revelation.

The correction offered by Biblical Christianity to the antinomianism inherent in all forms of Thomism is that all things are to be regulated and legislated according to God’s Word. In every area of life the Christian is to say, “In thy light we see light (Ps. 36:9).” There is no area of life where God’s Word, rightly handled and understood, should not be brought to bear in order to inform and guide. In God’s light we see light not only for ecclesiastical matters, but also for family life, political order, educational ordering, jurisprudence and law, as well as every other area of life.

Biblical Christians understand that as long as we continue to refuse God’s explicit Word on morality — a morality that informs the making of laws by our legislators — the result will be what we are now seeing; “And each man did what was right in his own eyes.” There must be a standard and Biblical Christianity from Ælfred the Great’s “Doom Book,” to Calvin’s sermons on Deuteronomy, to the Westminster standards, to the early colonial government laws in Puritan New England, that standard has been God’s revelation in the Scriptures.

Now it must be conceded to Thomistic views that for centuries Natural Law theory held sway in the Church — both Rome and later the Reformed church. However, I contend that only worked because the Western Christianized populations and leadership were all already presupposing some form of a Christian world and life view. When one advocates for Thomistic Natural Law theories while dwelling among a people who presuppose Christianity then naturally enough Natural Law is going to teach Christian morality and ethics. However, after over a couple hundred years of Enlightenment thinking — an Enlightenment thinking that is itself now breaking down under its own presuppositions — we no longer live in a time where Natural Law can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Natural Law will not provide a code wherein everyone will sign on. Enlightenment thinking has gone to seed producing early in the 2oth century Nihilism and Existentialism to now evolving in post-modernism and post-post modernism. The dialectical movement of the Enlightenment from mystical irrational apprehensions of reality (Romanticism, Kantianism, Existentialism, post-modernism) to rationalistic apprehensions of reality (Deism, Rationalism, Common Sense Realism) have demonstrated that only a return to an epistemology that is grounded on God’s revelation can fix what is broken about Western and formerly Christian man.

So, as Isaiah said long ago; “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.”