Imagination, Image of God and Wisdom of God:
Theosophical Themes in Dooyeweerd's Philosophy

by
Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

© 2006

Introduction

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Abraham Kuyper says in his Pentecost Meditations (p. 11):

I. Introduction

The Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) is more relevant today than ever before. Postmodernism is questioning the validity of modernism’s rationalistic and dualistic thought. It attempts to fully temporalize all of humanity’s existence and concerns, and it rejects any role of the transcendent. And in its emphasis on our historical constructs of reality, postmodernism has relativized all values, leaving both our everyday praxis and our theoretical thought without any foundations. Postmodernism is acutely aware of this lack of foundations. A key postmodern theme has been the discovery of what many call a post-critical (or post-liberal) position concerning the possibility of a re-enchantment of life and of the cosmos, based, in part, on a hermeneutics of retrieval. But just what is it that postmodernism is seeking to retrieve? And how do we re-enchant our world after the devastation to the foundations caused by the hermeneutics of suspicion?

I believe that Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, and in particular his ideas of imagination, help us to answer these questions. For Dooyeweerd, our acts of imagination do not only play a role in our aesthetic and artistic creations. Imagination is also fundamental to our act of perceiving the world, and to both our pre-theoretical and our theoretical knowledge. In our acts of imagination, we retrieve the wisdom of the past, a wisdom that reflects God’s Wisdom or Sophia. This is therefore an answer to one problem posed by postmodernism.

Our acts of imagination are also involved in our cultural formation of the world–when we realize and form that which has previously existed only as “figure” and not as reality. In our acts of imagination we find the figure, and in our cultural formation, we literally real-ize the figure, making the temporal world real in its fullest sense. Is this not the re-enchantment of the world that postmodernism is seeking? Dooyeweerd himself speaks of a ‘spiritualizing-through’ [doorgeestelijking] of temporal reality, and of man’s purpose to illuminate from within [doorlichten] all of temporal reality so that the supratemporal fullness of meaning shines through it (see discussion below).

Like postmodern philosophers, Dooyeweerd also opposes the rationalism of modernism and its various dualisms. He rejects the modernist dualism between a material body and rational soul, and the rationalism at the basis of such a dualism. Dooyeweerd also rejects the irrationalism that results from inverting such a dualism in order to elevate the body (or feelings, or aesthetics) over rationality. And he vigorously opposes any other dualisms where one aspect of temporal creation is elevated over the other aspects. He rejects even the idea of substance, since it is an improper absolutization of the physical aspect of our experience.

Dooyeweerd’s understanding of perception is one of his most astounding ways of overcoming dualism. He rejects the empirical and phenomenological assumptions of a dualism between an independent observing subject and an independent object. Our experience is not of independent things, but of “individuality structures” that depend on man for their full realization and individuality. And the process of perception is a subject-object relation that occurs within the modal aspects of temporal reality, in a nondual act of perception.

But Dooyeweerd’s opposition to modernism and to dualism does not mean that Dooyeweerd is a postmodernist. For, in contrast to postmodernism, Dooyeweerd maintains the importance of the transcendent, especially of our supratemporal selfhood and of its relation to the temporal cosmos. And he maintains the importance of God’s law, both in its central supratemporal form of love and in its temporal diversity, a law that provides the foundation for our existence, experience and theoretical thought. Dooyeweerd’s law-Idea [Wetsidee], together with his Ideas of cosmic time and the supratemporal selfhood, form the basis of his philosophy. I will compare this law-Idea to the idea of God’s Wisdom or Sophia.

Dooyeweerd distinguishes God’s eternity from the supratemporal aevum or created eternity [1]. And both eternity and aevum are distinguished from the cosmic time of our world. Our selfhood is supratemporal, but we are also “fitted into” temporal reality by our temporal body or what Dooyeweerd calls our ‘mantle of functions’ [functiemantel]. I will discuss this in more detail. But in making this distinction between selfhood and temporal mantle, Dooyeweerd is not introducing another dualism. Our selfhood is not one of our temporal functions. It is not, for example, merely our rational function. It is the supratemporal center, or heart, out of which all of our temporal functions proceed and are expressed [2].

Dooyeweerd says that a proper understanding of our supratemporal selfhood is tied to proper knowledge of God (eternity) and of the temporal cosmos (cosmic time). We cannot understand God, self or cosmos except in an interrelated way.

Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on our supratemporal selfhood is a kind of mysticism. It is not a mysticism of identity with God, or any kind of pantheistic mysticism. It is a nondual mysticism, emphasizing our total dependence on God. We are “from, through, and to” God as our Origin [3]. Although the correspondence is not exact, I have compared this to panentheism.

Nor is Dooyeweerd’s mysticism to be interpreted as a spiritualizing flight from the world. Although for Dooyeweerd our world is fallen, broken, and in need of redemption, we should not seek to escape from it. Rather, our task is to assist in the working out of its redemption, for this is the purpose for which we were created. As we shall see, this emphasis fits with theosophy’s emphasis on discovering the structures within temporal reality instead of escaping from temporal reality.

Dooyeweerd criticizes modernism by (1) transcendent criticism from his own perspective (2) immanent criticism, showing modernism’s internal inconsistencies and dualisms, even based on its own assumptions and (3) a transcendental critique based on the conditions that make possible any kind of theoretical thought.

But Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique depends on his view that that every philosophy needs to account for itself in terms of three transcendental Ideas: the Ideas of (a) Origin,(b) totality, and (c) temporal coherence. From a Christian perspective, these three transcendental Ideas correspond to (a) God (as Origin), (b) selfhood (as supratemporal religious root, fallen and redeemed in Christ, the New Root, in Whom we participate), (c) and cosmos (for Dooyeweerd, cosmos is only the temporal part of creation).

To the extent that postmodernism has given up trying to answer these three transcendental questions, Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique of postmodernism will not be convincing. Many postmodernists deny not only any need to discuss an origin, but also deny any idea of totality, especially a supratemporal totality like Dooyeweerd’s view of the selfhood. Indeed, much of postmodernism denies any identity of the selfhood at all, preferring to see it as a construct of many diverse and fragmented experiences. But perhaps some postmodernists will be willing to look at these issues again in the light of Dooyeweerd’s views on imagination.

Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique should not be rejected merely because the requirement of an answer to the three transcendental Ideas makes his argument circular. Dooyeweerd’s argument is circular, but it is not a circularity of mere concepts or theoretical presuppositions. Dooyeweerd makes a distinction between subjective presuppositions [vooronderstellingen] and “that which is presupposed” [de vooronderstelde]. Our Ideas, as “subjective presuppositions,” point towards “what is presupposed”–that is, towards the ontical conditions which make our thinking even possible at all [4]. Sometimes Dooyeweerd refers to what is presupposed, the ontical conditions, as ‘vóór-onderstellingen’[5]. Such playing with words, and the making of new technical terms by hyphenation, occurs frequently in Dooyeweerd, as it does in Heidegger. There is therefore a circularity in that our Ideas all point towards that which is presupposed in the sense of ontical conditions. Not only the three transcendental Ideas, but all of Dooyeweerd’s philosophical Ideas are interrelated–Ideas such as the supratemporal selfhood and religious root, the Idea of cosmic time, the nature of the modal aspects and the opening process, the subject-object relation, and the Gegenstand-relation. The meaning of one term involves the meaning of all the others. But this kind of circularity is a consequence of our Ideas pointing to their transcendental conditions in our supratemporal center, which alone makes these Ideas possible. From out of that center, we then express ourselves theoretically in the temporal periphery, where our concepts and ideas refer to modal aspects that display both sphere sovereignty and sphere universality. Dooyeweerd specifically refers to this kind of circularity in his 1946 Encyclopedia. The very idea of an encyclopedia involves this kind of learning in a circle [6].

So although Dooyeweerd opposes modernism, he is not himself a postmodernist. I suggest that he is a pre-modernist, one who has returned to philosophical roots that pre-date modernism. A postmodernist will object that it is not possible to return to pre-modernism. Do we not have to first follow the hermeneutics of suspicion before we can attempt a retrieval of the past? But Dooyeweerd’s approach is different. His philosophy seeks to cut off such unfruitful and dead-end thinking at its root. We do not have to first agree with the ideas of the autonomy of thought, and of the temporalization of our existence, in order to then reach the despairing realization that these are dead ends. For if those ideas are adopted, no positive retrieval will be possible. Our views of God, self and cosmos will remain dis-enchanted. But in criticizing modernism, Dooyeweerd has not evaded it. From out of his pre-modern roots, he has gone through modernism and beyond it, not adopting it, but criticizing it using its own tools of thought. He has anticipated the concerns and the problematics of postmodernism, but he has provided answers that are very different.

So my suggestion that Dooyeweerd is a pre-modernist should not be misunderstood. He is not a pre-modernist in the sense of Protestant fundamentalism. For fundamentalism, with its emphasis on rational propositional truth, is itself a form of modernism. Dooyeweerd criticizes those who seek to use the Bible as a textbook for philosophy.

Nor should Dooyeweerd’s pre-modernism be understood as a return to the kind of Catholicism that regards philosophy as the handmaiden of theology. Dooyeweerd rejects all attempts by the Church to control theoretical thought. For Dooyeweerd, theology is itself a theoretical discipline that depends on philosophical assumptions. And not even philosophy is ultimate, since it, too is theoretical, and relies on the givenness of our pre-theoretical experience. Philosophy attempts to theoretically “give an account” of our pre-theoretical experience, but that experience always remains primary. Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is experiential, but not in the subjectivistic sense of ‘Erlebnis,’ but in a sense of a conscious ‘Hineinleben’–a conscious experience of the relation of our supratemporal selfhood to the temporal world (NC II, 474-475). Our supratemporal selfhood is at the root of all our experience; we discover it in what Dooyeweerd calls an act of ‘religious self-reflection.’

So Dooyeweerd is not a modernist, nor a postmodernist, nor a Biblicist or fundamentalist, nor a philosopher whose thought is confined within a particular theology. Does Dooyeweerd’s pre-modern philosophy fit into any tradition at all? Elsewhere, I have shown how Dooyeweerd’s key ideas situate his philosophy within an existing tradition. This is the Wisdom tradition, or Christian theosophy, best exemplified in the philosophy of Franz von Baader (1765-1841), who also criticized modernism, using terminology and arguments very similar to the ones that Dooyeweerd used a hundred years later [7].

I have made the connection between Dooyeweerd and Baader because Dooyeweerd’s philosophy itself has driven me to explore the background of his ideas. It was in exploring the sources of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy that I began reading Christian theosophy. It makes sense of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy in a coherent way that respects the integrity and the importance of all of his key ideas.

So my comparison of Dooyeweerd and Christian theosophy is not something that I have read into Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. In fact, I was at first reluctant to even speak of theosophy, because the term is often associated with Madame Blavatsky’s kind of occult theosophy. But that is not the only kind of theosophy.

Some have traced the Greek word ‘theosophia’ to Ammonius Saccas, the teacher of Plotinus. But the term ‘Sophia’ itself, in the sense of the Wisdom of God, can be traced to Scripture. The book of Proverbs personifies Wisdom (chokmah in Hebrew), and refers to Wisdom’s role in creation:

The theme of Wisdom continues in later Jewish Scriptures. See, for example, the Book of Sirach, Chapter 24 [8]. And the theme is particularly important in the Book of Wisdom [9], which describes the role of Wisdom in the creation the cosmos. It is worthwhile looking at some of these verses:

The idea of Wisdom was certainly emphasized in the early centuries of the Church, and was at the center of many theological disputes. The Emperor Constantine (272-337 AD) dedicated the main church in Constantinople to Wisdom: he called it Hagia Sophia, or ‘Holy Wisdom.’ Augustine also refers to Wisdom. Garofalo’s painting of Augustine’s Vision, reproduced above, depicts the vision that Augustine describes in his Confessions. Augustine says that in this vision, he and his mother Monica reached out and briefly touched Wisdom. I discuss this in more detail in Appendix C, where I contrast Augustine’s vision with more metaphysical ways of describing supratemporal reality.

The idea of God’s Wisdom or Sophia has always remained important within Orthodoxy, but until recently, it has been downplayed in the Western church, or associated with Mary because of the feminine personification of Wisdom in the Scriptures. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in Wisdom, as some feminist theologians have sought to interpret Wisdom as a feminine being, or have even tried to interpret Wisdom in terms of Goddess imagery. In an article written for non-specialists, Fr. Leo D. Lefebure summarizes some of the historical developments in interpreting Sophia [10]. But whereas Lefebure’s article is useful in showing some of the controversies surrounding Sophia, his article does not emphasize the way that Sophia has been interpreted by Christian theosophy, and that's what is of interest in comparing Dooyeweerd’s thought to the Wisdom tradition.

Christian theosophy emphasizes the role of Wisdom in the creation of the cosmos. But Wisdom is not regarded as a separate person, distinct from the Trinity. Instead, Wisdom is the mirror of God. Christian theosophy emphasizes Wisdom 7:26: “For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.” Antoine Faivre refers to Baader, who says that Wisdom is not a person, and does not have the power of working independently (Selbstwirker). Instead, Wisdom is the collaborator in creation, the organ of God. Wisdom is the expression of the Word, or what Boehme calls the ‘Ausgesprochene.’ By His Wisdom, God ex-presses (entäussert) Himself in his “nature.” Sophia, the mirror of God, itself has that nature for a mirror, and the original mirror Sophia is glorified in this original divine nature. This divine nature is related to desire, for will without a desire would be a will without a nature. Like Wisdom, this nature has no personality (Selbstheit) of its own.[11]

This divine nature must not be confused with the nature of created reality. For although God’s Wisdom dwells within the created cosmos, and is visible to us as His “glory” or Schechina, there are two self-manifestations of God: one is eternal or immanent (within the Trinity) and the other is temporal or emanant. Baader criticizes Hegel and Schelling for failing to distinguish between these two “natures”–a naturata non creata creans and a temporal natura creata. They have confused the non-creaturely process that exists in God with the processes that occur within creation as an image or copy (Abbild) of the divine process. In this way they have fallen into pantheism, confusing the Creator with the creature [12]. I believe that the same confusion is made by process theology today.

Faivre says that the relation of the Trinity to Wisdom is the “arithmosophic” notion of the quaternity. But quaternity is not to be understood as four distinct persons [13]. The fourth is a passive element in relation to three active persons. Boehme calls the fourth element the ‘periphery,’ ‘body,’ or ‘dwelling’ of the Three (the Three are called the ‘Ternar’). And just as God expresses Himself in the divine nature, so man expresses himself in his body (Phil. de la Nature, 109). The relation in both is that of the center relating to its periphery. I will later discuss this idea of “expression” in more detail, and compare it to Dooyeweerd’s usage of the term.

Many works of Christian theosophy have not been translated into English. I have translated a few of Baader’s writings into English [14]. And an anthology, mostly of other writers, has been compiled by Arthur Versluis [15]. A very important book on the subject of Christian theosophy, particularly as it relates to the idea of imagination, is Antoine Faivre’s Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism [16].

It is my view that Dooyeweerd’s philosophy represents a continuation and a renewal of this Christian theosophical tradition, which was transmitted to him from Orthodoxy through Baader and others. Dooyeweerd’s ideas on imagination are embedded in this Christian theosophical tradition. We shall see the importance of Wisdom as mirror and image, and of imagination or image-ination. Here is an overview of the ideas that we will look at:.

In Part I of this work, I will explore Dooyeweerd’s ideas on imagination in relation to Christian theosophy, particularly in its understanding of man’s being created in the image of God, and of man’s imaginative task as bearer of God’s image.

In Part II, I will discuss the nature of imagination as an act, which like all acts, proceeds from out of our supratemporal selfhood and is then expressed temporally within our body or what Dooyeweerd calls our “mantle of functions.” It is also expressed outwardly in the external world.

In Part III, I will discuss the role of imagination as it specifically relates to perception, both within its restricted form and within its opened form. Dooyeweerd rejects the “copy theory” of perception, and this is related to Dooyeweerd’s rejection of the idea of substance. I discuss how this relates to Dooyeweerd’s understanding of the subject-object relation, and how this differs from current reformational thought.

In Part IV, I will discuss what Dooyeweerd calls the “opening process,” in which the anticipations in the modal aspects are opened, and by means of which the process of cultural forming takes place. I will examine what Dooyeweerd means when he says that the sensory image is “productive.” This is related to Dooyeweerd’s understanding of the historical aspect. I will also refer to reformational philosophers who have not understood the formative nature of the historical aspect, and who have therefore rejected the historical aspect.

In Part V, I will briefly discuss the role of imagination in aesthetics and creativity. Because Dooyeweerd’s ideas regarding imagination have been misunderstood, his aesthetic theory has also been misunderstood.

Finally, in Part VI, I will look at how imagination relates to Dooyeweerd’s understanding of theoretical thought, and to the intentional Gegenstand-relation on which theory is based. In the Gegenstand-relation, our supratemporal selfhood enters into the temporal functions of our own consciousness. The aspects in which our consciousness functions in time are split apart by our theoretical thought, and in this way, we discover the anticipations and “figures” that open up the modal aspects. We discover those figures by our intuitive vision. What is the connection between this inner image of the figure and the external world? Between our imagination and the aspects in which the structures of the external world function? God’s law, or Wisdom, gives the connection. And we are aware of the connection by means of our intuition, both pre-theoretical and theoretical.

I include several Appendices. Appendix A deals with the issue of whether Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is Calvinistic, or whether we must regard its theosophical nature as conflicting with Calvinism.

Appendix B deals with Dooyeweerd’s view of Animals. Dooyeweerd’s view is certainly anthropocentric, but if it is true, then to avoid contrasting man and the animal world would be to evade the task for which we were created.

Appendix C looks at Henry Corbin’s idea of the mesocosm, and compares and contrasts it with the views of imagination presented in this paper.

Appendix D is a compilation of some excerpts from Dooyeweerd’s book In the Twilight of Western Thought [17], together with some footnotes showing the central importance for Dooyeweerd of the Idea of religious root, and how the Christian Ground-motive of creation, fall and redemption cannot be understood apart from this Idea.

Appendix E lists other references from the Bible, from Orthodox sources, as well as later Protestant sources, referring to man as root and to Christ as New Root.

May this discussion of Dooyeweerd’s ideas of imagination lead to a better understanding of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, and to a better understanding of the relation between our knowledge of God, self and cosmos. And may it help us to re-enchant our experience of the world by orienting us again to God’s Wisdom or Sophia, and in realizing the images and anticipatory figures that we discover and realize by means of our imagination, as image-bearers of God.

Go to Part 1: Imagination and Christian Theosophy

Endnotes

[1] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Het tijdsprobleem en zijn antinomieën,” Philosophia Reformata 1 (1936) 65-83, 4 (1939) 1-28, at 4-5. See Linked Glossary, entry for ‘aevum,’ online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Aevum.html].

[2] See J. Glenn Friesen: “Monism, Dualism, Nondualism: A Problem with Vollenhoven’s Problem-Historical Method,” (2005), online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Method.html] [‘Method’].

[3] Herman Dooyeweerd: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997; Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969; first published 1953), I, 9 [‘NC’]. This was a translation and revision of De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935-36) [‘WdW’].

[4] Herman Dooyeweerd: Encyclopedia of the Science of Law (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) [‘Encyclopedia’], 80-81. But these passages have not been translated properly. See J. Glenn Friesen: “Dooyeweerd’s Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: Problems with the Present Translation,” (2006), online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/
Translation.pdf].

[5] See for example WdW I, 7 (‘de vóór-onderstelde’).

[6] Herman Dooyeweerd: Encyclopedia of Legal Science (1946). Translation online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Encyclopedia.html]. [‘1946 Encyclopedia’].

[7] J. Glenn Friesen: “The Mystical Dooyeweerd: The Relation of his Thought to Franz von Baader,” Ars Disputandi 3 (2003) [http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000088/index.html].

[8] Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), online at [http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=RsvSira.sgm&images=images/
modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=25&division=div1].

[9] Book of Wisdom, online at [http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/apo/wis008.htm].

[10] Leo D. Lefebure: “The Wisdom of God: Sophia and Christian Theology,” The Christian Century, (Oct. 19, 1994), online at [http://www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:15861175]. The article summarizes some of the theological controversies about Sophia.

[11] Antoine Faivre: Philosophie de la Nature: Physique sacrée et théosophie XVIII-XIX siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996) [‘Phil. de la Nature’], 109-11. Faivre points out that it is not God Himself who is expressed in the divine Nature, but God’s Wisdom, or Idea. And this is a much more personalized view of Idea than we find in Hegel.

[12] Ibid. 80-81, referring to Werke IX, 311. Man and cosmos are to dwell in the Schechina, like a child in the womb of his mother (Ibid., p. 121, referring to Werke II, 43, 46 ; and IV, 371).

[13] Some confusion has arisen here because of the way that Jung’s quaternary mandalas have been interpreted, and the way that he regarded the Catholic Church’s Dogma of the Assumption of Mary (1950) in relation to the quaternity.

[14] J. Glenn Friesen: “Studies Relating to Franz von Baader,” online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/baader/].

[15] Arthur Versluis: Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology (St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 2000). See also Arthur Versluis: Theosophia (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1994) [‘Versluis’].

[16] Antoine Faivre: Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York, 2000) [‘Faivre’].

[17] In the Twilight of Western Thought. Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Theoretical Thought, (Nutley, N.J.: The Craig Press, 1968, first published 1961) [‘Twilight’].

Go to Part 1: Imagination and Christian Theosophy