Marlet

In his 1964 Lecture to the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy [1], Herman Dooyeweerd said that recent Roman Catholic theology had expressed ideas that came very close to his own philosophy. These developments had caused Dooyeweerd to change his mind about publishing Volume II of his planned trilogy Reformation and Scholasticism. He had planned that volume as a polemic against scholasticism. But the book had now lost its point (1964 Lecture, 11-13). He says that Roman Catholic theology is now moving in a direction opposed to scholasticism; it has now raised the following ideas: (1) it speaks about man’s radical corruption (2) it opposes any split between a domain of philosophy belonging to natural light of reason and a domain of theology belonging to the divine light of revelation (3) it denies the autonomy of thought (4) it affirms the religious center of man.

As an example of this new Catholic theology, Dooyeweerd refers to the doctoral dissertation of the Jesuit Fr. Michael J. Marlet [2]. Ten years before Dooyeweerd’s 1964 Lecture, G.C. Berkouwer had expressed strong criticism of Marlet’s dissertation; Berkouwer found much more divergence than agreement between Dooyeweerd and Marlet [3]. In my view, Berkouwer’s concern was too theological; he focused on whether or not this new theology is in continuity with previous Roman Catholic theology. But in his 1964 Lecture, Dooyeweerd makes it clear that it is not theological agreement that is important, but agreement regarding the central religious [i.e. supratemporal] truths. Dooyeweerd gives as an example his agreement with a Remonstrant preacher. He says,

If I had been theologically inclined against you and you of course would have theologically defended yourself, then we would again have stood over against each other in accordance with the old labels. Yesterday evening you suddenly heard me speaking in tongues. You have heard what binds us together. And that is not a trifling matter. For I have spoken about the very deepest truths from the Bible, and there we can find each other (1964 Discussion, 21).

For Dooyeweerd, these central and deepest truths concern our religious supratemporal root or selfhood, and the central driving force of God’s Word in our heart. Ecumenism is based on this work of God in our heart, and not on theology.

A year and a half later, in his farewell lecture (afscheidscollege) on October 16, 1965, Dooyeweerd states that his agreement with Marlet was not theological, for Marlet himself objected to what he believed to be Dooyeweerd’s theological background; rather, it was based on the shared idea of a transcendental philosophy.[4] And a transcendental philosophy in turn relies on a view of a transcendent selfhood. Dooyeweerd says that the agreement with Marlet was based on the shared idea of a transcendental philosophy. And that in turn relies on a view of a transcendent selfhood, which Dooyeweerd refers to in this same farewell lecture as “the key of self-knowledge.”[5] Dooyeweerd says that Abraham Kuyper rediscovered this key, the idea of the religious root of human existence. And it is this idea of the religious root that allows us to overcome the dualism of nature and grace, and the idea of an autonomous area of natural reason.

Dooyeweerd says that Marlet must have recognized that the central biblical ground motive of the Philosophy of the Law Idea is not of a theoretical-theological nature, and that it has an ecumenical character accepted by the Holy universal Christian Church at all times. This Church is not built or maintained by humans, but by the power of God’s Word and Spirit within the human heart, the root of man’s existence:

Daarom is dit grondmotief, dat in zijn radicale bijbelse zin de mens in de wortel zijner existentie raakt, dat heel ons leven en denken in Christus een nieuwe richting wijst en ons oproept tot een dagelijkse strijd tegen de afvallige neiging van ons hart, ook het ware reformerend beginsel voor ons wetenschappelijk denken… [6]

[That is why this ground motive, which in its radical biblical sense affects man in the root of his existence, which shows in Christ a new direction for all our life and thought, and which calls us to a daily battle against the apostate inclination of our heart, is also the true reforming principle for our scientific thought…]

As already mentioned, Dooyeweerd refers to four ways in which the new Catholic theology has approached his own philosophy. These four ways are all related to this idea of the supratemporal religious root. It is because of man’s religious root that (1) man’s corruption is radical (i.e., in the root, from which our rationality and all other functions proceed) (2) there can be no split between nature and grace (3) there can be no autonomy of thought and (4) man has a religious center.

Dooyeweerd’s idea of the supratemporal selfhood as religious root can be traced back to the influence of the Christian theosophist, Franz von Baader [7]. Dooyeweerd says he obtained this idea from Abraham Kuyper. But as Lieuwe Mietus has shown, Kuyper’s idea of the supratemporal heart—the center of human existence—was derived from J.H. Gunning, Jr., who obtained it from Baader. [8] And in my own research, I have shown that Kuyper specifically praised Baader for his opposition to the idea of the autonomy of thought (Friesen 2003b, 2007, 2011).

In this article, I will show that Baader also influenced the new Catholic theology, which Marlet relies on. In particular, I will look at Baader’s influence on the theologians Henri de Lubac, Erich Przywara, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. It is not that Dooyeweerd and these Catholic theologians somehow came up with the same ideas. Rather, they were inspired by the same source. By looking at these sources, we obtain a better understanding of both Catholic theology and Dooyeweerd’s philosophy.

I will first refer to some key points in Marlet’s dissertation to show his understanding of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, and the correspondence in their ideas. I will then show how the new Catholic theologians relied on Baader in arriving at these conclusions. Finally, I will briefly address some problems in Marlet’s analysis of Dooyeweerd.

II. Marlet’s dissertation

A. Marlet’s understanding of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy

Marlet’s summary of the Philosophy of the Law-idea makes a good introduction to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. Marlet interprets Dooyeweerd on the basis of what Dooyeweerd himself says is important: the idea of the supratemporal selfhood, the idea of cosmic time, and the idea of the Gegenstand-relation as the basis of theoretical thought.

Marlet refers to the importance for Dooyeweerd of the idea the heart as the religious center of man’s being (Marlet 28). The heart as religious center is basic to Dooyeweerd’s philosophical anthropology, and that philosophical anthropology is basic to his whole philosophy. Marlet demonstrates this by referring to the concluding pages of Dooyeweerd’s De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee [9]. Dooyeweerd’s conclusion to this three-volume work bears the heading, “De plaats van de mens in den kosmos als eigenlijk grondthema van de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee” [Man’s place in the cosmos as actually the basic theme of the Philosophy of the Law-Idea]. And Dooyeweerd’s conclusion refers specifically to the supratemporal nature of man’s selfhood or heart [“boven-tijdelijke zelfheid in den religieuzen wortel van zijn bestaan;” see WdW III, 627]. And Dooyeweerd says that his thesis is that the central question “Who is man?” is both the beginning and the end of philosophical reflection (NC III, 783). The central sphere of human existence “transcends the temporal horizon” (NC III, 784).

Marlet refers to this selfhood as “transcendent” (Marlet 36). And it is clear that he understands Dooyeweerd to be referring to a supratemporal religious root-unity. This is clear from Marlet’s discussion of the modal aspects. The unity of the modal aspects is supratemporal. The modal aspects have sphere sovereignty precisely only because of this supratemporal unity:

Weil die modalen Strukturen nur eine überzeitliche Einheit besitzen und nur auf einen überzeitlichen Generalnenner zurückgeführt werden können, sind die Gesetzeskreise einander gegenüber unreduzierbar, haben jeder für sich Souveräniteit im eigenen Kreis (Marlet, 49)

[Because the modal structures posses only a supratemporal unity, and can only be reduced to a supratemporal common denominator, the [temporal] modal laws are mutually irreducible to each other. That is why each modal law has sovereignty in its own sphere.]

The modal aspects, which are investigated in theoretical thought, cannot be understood apart from their root supratemporal unity. It is because of that supratemporal unity that the modal aspects have sphere sovereignty within cosmic time. In his 1964 Lecture, Dooyeweerd says that the idea of the modal aspects is one of the least understood ideas of his philosophy (1964 Discussion, 2, 8). It is not surprising that many reformational philosophers have misunderstood the modal aspects, for these philosophers deny the whole idea of supratemporality. But apart from supratemporality, we cannot understand the modal aspects nor their sphere sovereignty. In the last article that he wrote (1974), Dooyeweerd repeats the idea that the modal aspects cannot be understood apart from this supratemporal religious root-unity. He says that without the idea of the transcendent selfhood as religious root, we cannot understand the modal aspects, either in their irreducibility or their coherence. In the same article, Dooyeweerd says that it is a “serious mistake” to view the modal aspects as abstractions from temporal reality. Theoretical abstraction is not the abstraction of properties and laws, but the abstraction from the continuity of time. [10]

Because Marlet emphasizes Dooyeweerd’s idea of the supratemporality of the heart, he also understands Dooyeweerd’s view of theoretical thought as a Gegenstand relation. Dooyeweerd says that theoretical thought is the act of our supratemporal selfhood entering into the temporal functions of our own consciousness [11]. It is only this act—of the supratemporal selfhood entering the temporal—that allows us to set these temporal functions over against each other in the Gegenstand-relation so that we can theoretically analyze the nature of the modal aspects of our consciousness.

Marlet correctly says that Dooyeweerd’s idea of the modal aspects is related to the temporal structure (the temporal functions) of our transcendent (supratemporal) selfhood. That is why the nature of theoretical thought cannot be understood apart from the supratemporal selfhood, which functions in the same temporal coherence:

Möglich sei diese Abstraktion dadurch, daß sie im selben zeitlichen Zusammenhang vor sich geht, der in der Struktur der transzendenten Einheit des Selbst verwurzelt ist, das, weil es in allen Aspekten fungiert, dies alle als ihm eigene erfährt. Die transcendente Einheit des Selbst, selber als kreatürliche Einheit an der religiösen Wurzel der Schöpfung teilhabend, sei darin konzentrisch auf die Ursprungseinheit ausgerichtet. Diese konzentrische Beziehung sei Strukturgesetz des Selbst […] Dieses Strukturgesetz oder Gesetz “religiöser Konzentration” bedeutet, daß alle Selbsterkenntnis durch Gotteserkenntnis, im Abfall durch Götzenerkenntnis, völlig bedingt sei (Marlet, 38-39).

[Such abstraction is possible because it takes place in the same temporal coherence that is rooted in the structure of the transcendent unity of the selfhood—a selfhood that experiences all the [temporal] aspects as its own because it functions in all of these aspects. As a creaturely unity, this transcendent unity of the selfhood participates in the religious root of creation, and in this way is concentrically directed to the [divine, not creaturely] Unity of Origin. This concentric relation is the structural law of the selfhood […]. This structural law, the law of “religious concentration,” means that all self-knowledge is completely determined by knowledge of God. And in the case of fallen man, self-knowledge is completely determined by knowledge of idols.]

By the theoretical Gegenstand-relation, our supratemporal selfhood (as center) enters into our temporal functions (of our body). But those functions of our temporal body are identical to the functions of the temporal world. There is a correspondence—an “identity”—between the inner, merely intentional [12] object and the outer world that is given by God’s law [13]. As Marlet says, this identity allows us to experience the aspects as our own, because our selfhood participates in these same temporal aspects [14]. This experience of the temporal aspects as our own is what Dooyeweerd calls ‘cosmic consciousness,’ where the self knows the relatedness of cosmic reality to its own structure. In contrast to this pre-theoretical consciousness, our theoretical attitude results in ‘cosmological consciousness,’ which deepens our experience and relates it back to the religious root of our existence. Marlet sums up this idea:

Bei theoretischer Vertiefung erschließt sich die logische Subjektsfunktion des Selbst zum logischen Auseinander- und Gegenüberstellen der Wirlichkeit in deren zeitlichen Aspekten. Und diese Vertiefung vollzieht sich in transzendentaler Richtung, das heißt, ausgerichtet auf die Struktur des transzendenten Selbst das sich in der Sinnverschiedenheit und dem nunmehr gegliederten Sinnzusammenhang all seiner Funktionen, nach seiner transzendenten Einheit in der religiösen Wurzel seiner Existenz, jetzt kosmologisch bewußt wird. (Marlet 39-40).

[In theoretical deepening [of thought], the logical subject function of the selfhood opens up the temporal aspects of reality by setting these aspects apart and over against each other. And this deepening completes itself in the transcendent direction. In other words, it is aligned with the structure of the transcendent Self, which—in the diversity of meaning and the actual articulated coherence of meaning of all of its functions—becomes cosmologically [15] aware of its transcendent unity in the religious root of its existence].

Thus, the deepening of theoretical thought is itself a religious act, since it relates our experience to a deeper religious root. This is also what Dooyeweerd says: in acts of theoretical thought, we relate our theoretical synthesis to the identity of functions that we experience in the religious root of our existence [16]. God’s law is a law of concentration towards the supratemporal religious root [17]. The cosmic temporal coherence is directed towards our supratemporal selfhood, which in turn is directed to the eternal Origin.

Theoretical thought therefore is related to Dooyeweerd’s three transcendental ideas: (1) the temporal coherence in cosmic time (2) the creaturely and transcendent unity of the selfhood and (3) the eternal and divine Origin. These three ideas correspond to three levels of time: cosmic time, the supratemporal aevum, and eternity. Marlet says that the structural horizon of human experience is given as a cosmic horizon of time in the indissoluble coherence and order of the aspects in cosmic time. And it is given as a transcendent horizon in the self, as the individual center of human existence, from which our theoretical act of thought proceeds. Finally, it is given in the supra-individual religious root in which the selfhood participates as it is concentrically directed to the Origin (Marlet, 39). [18]

Marlet says that for Dooyeweerd, our intuition is related to our heart or innermost self. Our heart is where we have the fullness of knowledge or intuition. It is because of our innermost self that we can form ideas of God, self and the cosmic coherence of the cosmos. These ideas direct any concepts that we may have of coherence (Marlet, 104-105) [19]. This is confirmed by what Dooyeweerd says elsewhere. It is only because we both transcend time and are immanently “fitted into” temporal reality that we can perform the theoretical act of synthesis of meaning:

The possibility of meaning-synthesis can only be explained on the basis of what we previously said in a more summary manner concerning the structure of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness transcends cosmic time, insofar as the individual selfhood participates in the religious root of the human race, from whose fullness of meaning all temporal meaning-functions (both natural as well as spiritual functions) are only temporal refractions. Self-consciousness is immanent within cosmic time, insofar as our functions of consciousness are interwoven within the cosmic order of time. The a-logical meaning functions are not foreign to our self-consciousness. They are all together owned by our selfhood. It is only because of this that we can learn to know them in their meaningful conformity to law. [my translation] [20]

For Dooyeweerd, our intuition relates our supratemporal selfhood to our functions in time. For our intuition relates the theoretical intermodal meaning-synthesis to the transcendent identity of the modal functions experienced in our religious root. For it is our intuition that shows us that our temporal functions are “our own” Our intuition of time allows us to "enter into the temporal cosmos" and to set apart and combine the modal aspects in theoretical thought. This is because it is an intuition of time (NC II, 478-480). And it is only because of our supratemporal selfhood that we can form Ideas of the transcendental supratemporal conditions that make all thought possible, while nevertheless remaining bound to philosophy [21]. Even the aspects are described as “modes of intuition” [schouwingswijzen]. [22]

Marlet cites Dooyeweerd that theoretical thought, when practiced correctly, is done by subjecting our [transcendent] subjective intuition to the cosmic or temporal law-order. And this requires a belief in divine Revelation in Christ, who in the self-revelation of God also reveals man to himself. Man is revealed as the religious root unity of his creaturely existence, in which the whole meaning of the temporal cosmos is concentrated (Marlet, 40).

Marlet also gives a good account of Dooyeweerd’s idea of individuality structures: they are individual wholes in the diversity of modal aspects. The individual thing is given in a totality structure, which groups the distinguished aspects of its reality into a typical totality (Marlet, 52ff).

Marlet regards Dooyeweerd’s philosophy as falling within the Catholic tradition of Christian transcendence philosophy. Such transcendence philosophy holds that there is a religious basic structure, a structural a priori. Marlet distinguishes such a structural a priori from our subjective views of such a structure. Ground-Motives are subjective views, and not to be identified with the ontical structure itself. Again, this corresponds to Dooyeweerd’s distinction between ontical conditions and subjective presuppositions of thought that seek to approximate those ontical conditions. [23]

Marlet emphasizes that religious Ground-Motives [Leitmotiven] are not final or static propositions. Rather, they are subjective dynamic tendencies. And there are really only two tendencies: (1) the tendency to absolutize what is merely human when one proceeds from the apostate root of existence and (2) the desire for salvation and complete surrender, which proceeds from God’s grace in Christ. Accordingly, a standpoint of religious synthesis compromises the supratemporal in that supposes that the present temporal, fleeting and interim tension is a permanent one. Similarly, Dooyeweerd speaks of two primary Ground-Motives: the biblical and the apostate. There are two central main springs operative in the heart (NC I, 61). Dooyeweerd ; he subdivides the apostate Ground Motive into three subtypes: the Greek form/matter motive, the scholastic nature/grace motive, and the enlightenment nature/freedom motive.

Marlet says that the ontical religious basic structure has its basis in creation, fall, and redemption in Christ. But this basic religious structure also shows an articulation (Gliederung); the structure concerns not only Christ, but also we who participate in Him. As Christ says, He is the vine, we are the branches. Or as Paul says, “We in Christ…”. And Marlet cites John 15:5: “Whoever abides in me and in whom I abide, he brings forth much fruit, for without me he can do nothing.” Marlet says that this is an insight not of Greek philosophy, but of revelation (Marlet, 108). He cites J. Danielou for the way that the Christian idea of creation has defended against Greek ideas (Marlet, 110).

B. A comparison of Marlet and Dooyeweerd

Dooyeweerd refers to Marlet as an example of how Roman Catholic thought has approached his own philosophy. Let us now look at some of the similarities that Dooyeweerd mentions, as enumerated in his 1964 Lecture:

1. Man’s radical corruption

Marlet agrees that man is radically corrupt since the fall, and that we cannot rely on rationality alone. He refers to rationalism as original sin (“erbsündliche Rationalismus des menschlichen Denkens”) (Marlet 128).

Although Marlet continues to speak in terms of nature and grace, he does not use these terms in a dualistic way, but he says that man’s nature presupposes grace, and that man’s nature is directed from within towards grace. Man as a concrete person has been affected by sin in his very root, the center of the person, which constitutes and forms his wholeness. Grace restores again the right relation to God in the innermost center of the person. And this redemption is the point of departure of the all-encompassing recognition of God in the structural whole of man’s temporal existence. But we must distinguish between this harmony in man’s heart, and the temporal tension in everything that is unfolds temporally and that is structurally based on the heart. This temporal area of tension includes service to others, the realm of values, and the unfolding of what is human. It also includes our act of thinking. Even when our thinking proceeds from a regenerated heart, it still has traces of original and historical sin. Marlet cites with approval the view of Étienne Gilson and Henri de Lubac that even after baptism, traces of the old worldview and the autonomous thought of Aristotle remain (Marlet, 99). He also cites Hans Urs von Balthasar that man has the capacity for religious knowledge, but that there is a moral impossibility of our having such knowledge (Marlet, 97). Again, this is similar to Dooyeweerd’s view that the religious antithesis cuts transversally through the heart of everyone, including Christians (NC I, 524).

2. No split between natural reason and divine revelation

Marlet also agrees with Dooyeweerd in opposing a two-storey, dualistic view of reality (Marlet 67). He specifically opposes any division into a realm of nature and a realm of grace.

3. Rejection of the idea of autonomy of thought

In the very first sentence of Marlet’s dissertation, he rejects the autonomy of thought. Marlet refers to the religious nature of philosophical thought in contrast to autonomous conceptual tendencies. Marlet says that the Vatican Council of 1870 opposed the autonomy of thought. It opposed both the rationalistic and the irrationalistic errors of autonomous reason (Marlet, 82-83, 90).

Marlet characterizes Dooyeweerd’s philosophy as Christian transcendence philosophy, a philosophy that is conscious of its Christian revelation a priori (Marlet, 101). Christian philosophy is rooted not only in Aquinas but in tradition. The Encyclical “Aeterni Patris” (1879) refers to Aquinas, but only “as an example” of Christian philosophy. Marlet relies here on Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Erich Przywara (Marlet, 84, 93-95). True philosophy is concrete reflection, which includes both the Augustinian line emphasizing the existential, and the Aristotelian-Thomist line that emphasizes the scientific function.

Marlet is careful not to accept the Cartesian ideal of philosophy as merely conceptual; that would raise the danger of philosophy as one-sidedly understood from out of the personal center, and it would give only temporary meaning that would be fulfilled through theology (Marlet, 102).

4. Affirmation of the religious center of man.

Marlet is also in agreement with the idea of man’s heart as the religious center. He cites J.B. Lotz regarding the deep structure or ground of the soul,

…in dem alle Kräfte der Seele ihre einzige Wurzel haben” oder auch Herz genannt. “Herz bezeichnet das Innerste des Menschen, die einige Mitte, aus der all sein Denken, Wollen und Tun emporsteigt, und die all dies als bloße Teilenfaltungen eines einzigen Gesamtlebensvollzuges zusammenhält…Vom Herzen wird gesagt, es sei unruhig; Unruhe oder Ruhelosigkeit bildet geradezu sein Wesen…Tatsächlich aber ist die Unruhe gerade Folge, Ausdruck und Offenbarwerden der tiefen Gerichtetheit des Herzens, seiner Gerichtetheit auf Gott, der uns und damit besonders unseren Seelengrund oder unser Herz zu sich selbst hin erschaffen hat. [24]

[…in which all powers have the soul have their single root, which is also referred to as ‘heart.’ ‘Heart’ means the innermost part of man, the unified center, from which ascends all his thinking, willing and acting, and which holds together all of these as mere partial unfoldings from a single power of our total life…It is said of the heart that it is restless; unrest or restlessness immediately forms its essence…However the unrest is actually a consequence, expression and a being revealed of the deepest directedness of the heart, its directedness to God, who has created us and thereby especially the ground of our soul, our Heart, towards himself.]

Marlet also cites W. Couturier (1903-1992) [25], who followed Karl Rahner and Johannes B. Lotz. Couturier says,

L’esprit human…ne peut être compris que comme intériorité qui se meut vers soi-même à travers une extériorité, formée par lui, dans laquelle et par laquelle il se realise. Or, cette extériorité de l’esprit human c’est la réalité du corps (Marlet, 124).

[The human spirit…cannot be understood except as an interiority that moves towards itself across an exteriority formed by itself, and in which and by which it realizes itself. Now, this exteriority of the human spirit is the reality of the body.]

Marlet says that part of this idea is evident in H. Robbers, one of the first Catholics to comment on Dooyeweerd’s work [26]. Robbers relied on Maurice Blondel, Karl Rahner, Jean Maréchal, and de Petter for the idea that philosophical thought would be impossible without the religious root of our personality, our self. Karl Rahner was certainly aware of Franz von Baader. This is evident from his review of Spreckelmeyer’s book on Baader. [27]

And Jean Maréchal (1878-1944) wrote Psychology of the Mystics [28]. Dooyeweerd owned a copy of this book, as is evident by the list of that part of his personal library that was incorporated in the library of the Free University [29]. I find it fascinating that Maréchal was aware of and cites the reformed theologian Chantepie de la Saussaye (p. 141 fn 106). De la Saussaye, together with J.H. Gunning, Jr., founded the school of ethical theology. They were both highly influenced by Baader, and together introduced Abraham Kuyper to Baader’s ideas, including the all-important idea of the heart as man’s supratemporal center [30]. I have elsewhere provided a detailed examination of the influence of J.H. Gunning, Jr. and Chantepie de la Saussaye on both Kuyper and Dooyeweerd (Friesen 2011). I also find it interesting that Maréchal cites (at p. 350), the Hindu Scriptures, the Isa Upanishad,

The man who understands that all creatures subsist only in God, and who is acquainted with the unity of being, has no sadness or illusion.

The relation between these ideas and those of the selfhood are too complex to detail in this article. It is sufficient to point out that the psychologist C.G. Jung also obtained his idea of the selfhood from the Upanishads. So did the psychologist Frederik van Eeden, who more directly influenced Dooyeweerd (Friesen 2011). And Dooyeweerd’s denial of the idea of substance as well as the idea that we have any existence in ourselves is related to this idea of subsistence only in God. Nevertheless, as I have argued before, the idea of “unity of being” tends towards a monistic view of reality, and one that I do not find in Dooyeweerd. Rather, there is a nondual unity in duality. [31]

For Robbers, philosophical thought can only be understood as a religious act of the self [Selbsttätigkeit], expressing itself or acting within the temporal, theoretical area (Marlet, 76). But Marlet also says that these ideas of Robbers cannot be reconciled with Robbers’ more traditional ideas of nature and grace. Marlet says that H. Robbers responded to Dooyeweerd’s critique from out of the nature/grace schema (Marlet, 74).

III. Baader as a common source of ideas

Marlet tends to view both Dooyeweerd’s philosophy and the new Catholic theology as proceeding independently towards the same idea of a Christian philosophy of transcendence. His argument would have been stronger if he had shown that both were strongly influenced by the same source: the Christian theosophical ideas of Franz von Baader. Baader was a Roman Catholic who was also attracted to Orthodoxy. He tried to unite Catholics, Protestants and the Orthodox Church. Although Marlet is aware of the ethical theology of de la Saussaye and J.H. Gunning, Jr. (Marlet 20), he does not seem to have made the connection between their theology and that of Franz von Baader (Friesen 2011). He also does not know of the influence of these theologians on Kuyper’s idea of the heart, which was taken over by Dooyeweerd. Marlet does distinguish between the genuine reformational line in Kuyper and the other line in Kuyper that is more traditionally dualistic [32]. But the “reformational line” that Dooyeweerd accepted in Kuyper, including the all-important idea of the supratemporal heart, seems to have been derived from Baader, via the theology of J.H. Gunning, Jr.[33] Vollenhoven and his followers, who continued to be more explicitly Calvinistic, rejected Kuyper’s ideas of the heart and its regeneration, precisely the ideas that Dooyeweerd accepted. [34]

Marlet refers to the Roman Catholic theologians Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. All of these theologians were deeply influenced by Baader, both with respect to the idea of the central inner heart of man, and in their rejection of a two-storey nature/grace dualism. It is worthwhile looking in more detail at Baader’s influence on them.

Henri de Lubac (1896-1991)

Henri de Lubac rejected a view of nature as separate from grace. In his book Catholicism, he says that when the supernatural is deprived of its organic links with nature, it tends to be understood as a “super-nature,” or a “double” of nature. After such a complete separation, such a theology has nothing to say to naturalistic thought, which emphasizes only nature in its secularized way. [35]

The book was controversial. During the 1950’s, de Lubac’s teachings regarding supernaturalism were criticized. It was thought that the encyclical Humani Generis was directed against him, especially when he was asked to stop publication of his ideas [36]. De Lubac was later rehabilitated. Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in February, 1983.

De Lubac continued his critique of the wrong kind of supernaturalism in his book The Mystery of the Supernatural:

While wishing to protect the supernatural from any contamination, people had in fact exiled it altogether—both from intellectual and from social life—leaving the field free to be taken over by secularism. [37]

De Lubac argues that such a separated view of “pure nature” does not appear in eastern theology, and that this is explained by the fact that the early Greek tradition did not contain this idea. He also argues that the idea of a pure nature is not to be found in Aquinas, but that it is due to later interpreters, especially Cajetan (1468-1534).

It is evident that de Lubac had a good knowledge of Franz von Baader, including Baader’s correspondence. He says that Baader, like Boehme, is in the tradition of Joachim of Flores. For Baader, Joachim’s third age has already come. There is both the expectation of Christ’s return as well as a present inner return in the depths of our heart [38]. In the same book, de Lubac comments how Baader deflected the theosophist Oetinger from Malebranche’s Christian rationalism (I, 248). As we shall see, Przywara and von Balthasar were students of de Lubac, and they expressly refer to Baader’s rejection of the rationalist idea of the autonomy of thought.

De Lubac also says that Baader believed that evil was not just a privation of the good, but a positive antithesis in principle, a principle that is spiritual, both within us and outside of us. If we could only penetrate beneath the surface of things, we would see the frightening and terrible substantial basis of life and existence. Abraham Kuyper was later to use a similar idea of Baader's in his aesthetics. [39]

Erich Przywara (1889-1972)

Marlet also refers to Erich Przywara, a philosopher of religion and theologian from Munich. He had been a student of Henri de Lubac. Przywara criticized all “extrinsicism” in the doctrine of grace. This incorrect view of grace can be described as follows:

Briefly, this is the theory that there was something like a self-contained human “nature” (natura pura) equipped with its own natural goal to which grace is then added as an undeserved “supplement” and endows the human person with an additional “supernatural” goal. [40]

Przywara opposed any idea of grace as a discontinuation of nature or as a continuance of a dualism [41]. There can be no dualism, because there is a relation between God and every field or domain of creation. Przywara expressly refers to Franz von Baader with respect to this problem of nature and grace. He says that Baader is one of the philosophers who rejected the Enlightenment idea of autonomous knowledge. In contrast to Descartes’ view of knowledge as based on “cogito ergo sum” [I think, therefore I am], Baader proposed “cogitor ergo sum” [I am thought, therefore I am] [42]. In place of autonomous thinking, Baader proposed a receiving and moved thought [43]. It is a knowledge that is already faith [44]. In Baader there was a “turn from the synthetic unity of the I in its problematic between object and subject to the concrete ‘all.’ Przywara relates this idea to the ideas of neo-Thomism. He says that in neo-Thomism, the accent is on a “pointing beyond oneself, the readiness for revelation. [45]

In another article, Przywara says that Baader followed Augustine’s theosophy, a line which continues in some modern Russian philosophers (Solowjew, Berdjajew, Schestow, and Bulgakoff). [46]

Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was one of the new Catholic theologians who rejected the scholastic dualism between nature and grace. Medard Kehl says that von Balthasar

…belongs with Przywara, de Lubac, Fessard, Daniélou, Douillard, Congar, Hugo Rahner and Karl Rahner, among others, to that generation of theologians who, precisely with the help of the church fathers, gave the final deathblow to the “two-storey-thinking” of the neoscholastic doctrine of grace and thereby overcame the unhealthzy—for the encounter of the church with modern consciousness—dualism in Catholic thought between nature and grace, history and revelation, experience and faith (Von Balthasar Reader, 5).

Von Balthasar’s ideas were much admired by Pope John Paul II [47], as well as by the present Pope Benedict [48]. In 1929, von Balthasar joined the Society of Jesus. Erich Przywara influenced his studies in philosophy. Von Balthasar translated Henri de Lubac’s work Catholicism (1938) into German, referring to it as the “basic book” of theology. He also studied under Henri de Lubac, who inspired him to research the Church Fathers. Von Balthasar wrote important studies on Origen (Parole et mystère chez Origène, 1957), Gregory of Nyssa (Présence et Pensée, 1942), and Maximus the Confessor (Kosmische Liturgie, 1941 ).[49] Von Balthasar said that the Church Fathers should not be read just in terms of speculative knowledge, for they then become boring. Rather, they must be read in terms of the restlessness of the heart.[50] In his introduction to von Balthasar, Stratford Caldecott says,

The true God is to be found wherever the “parallel lines” of this world meet, at the converging-point of the common or “transcendental” properties of being that we call Truth, Goodness and Beauty. It is only in Beauty that Truth is good, and that Goodness is true. By losing the sense of Beauty, by closing the “spiritual senses” that grasp the colours and the contours, the taste and the fragrance of Truth in its radiant body, the theologians had betrayed even the very Master they claimed to serve. [51]

Like Przywara, Von Balthasar was aware of and appreciated the ideas of Franz von Baader. Von Balthasar refers appreciatively to Baader’s rejection of a human reason that is under the illusion of being absolute. And like Przywara, Von Balthasar refers to Baader’s idea that our knowledge is not autonomous, but is based on our being known by God:

If God becomes an object of my reason, he is no longer primarily the eye which sees me and in whose light I behold his light […]. No: God is the one who knows me. There is truth in Franz von Baader’s formula: “cogitor (cognoscor), ergo sum” I am, because God knows me. Paul continually found new and luminous formulations for this fundamental relationship: “’Knowledge’ (gnosis) puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him” (1 Cor. 8:1ff).

[…] “Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor. 13:12). Here below it is not a matter of integrity of gnosis but integrity of love, which is elevated and praised by Paul above everything else; the fragmentary nature of our knowledge is a veritable spur of love, which races ahead to embrace him who already knows me—which means, in the case of God, that he affirms me and chooses me in love. Here Paul does not hesitate to equate man’s ultimate knowledge of God with his being known by God; in the sense of John’s immanence-formulas, the unmediated indwelling of mutual, loving insight.

Finally, “Now you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Gal. 4:9). You have stepped out of the obscurity of purely worldly knowledge into the light of the knowledge of God; this you owe to being known already by God. […]Thus our knowledge of God is an act of creation on God’s part. “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). This is the knowledge manifested to the Apostle on the road to Damascus; it did not manifest itself to him merely as an object but shone interiorly in the personal knowledge of his heart. The unity of knowing and being known cannot be expressed in a profounder or more intimate way. [52]

Baader had also emphasized the importance of God’s love as the basis for our knowledge. [53]

We can find other important references by Von Balthasar to Baader. Von Balthasar wrote an Afterword to Valentin Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot. Von Balthasar praises the book, although he says that the power of its spiritual vision is primarily in the author’s certainty of the interrelationship between all things by way of analogy. He traces these ideas to Baader:

There are other historical examples analogous to that of the gathering and accommodation of Hermetic and Cabbalistic wisdom into Biblical and Christian thought: above all, the transposition of Chassidism to a modern horizon of thought by Martin Buber (Chassidism is deeply influenced by the Cabbala). However, just as strong in its creative power of transformation is the incorporation of Jacob Boehme’s Christosophy into the Catholic world-conception by the philosopher Franz von Baader. […] The author’s Meditations on the Tarot are in the tradition of the great accomplishments of Pico della Mirandola and Franz von Baader, but are independent of them. [54]

Like the other Roman Catholic theologians relied on by Marlet, Von Balthasar rejects a dualistic separation between nature and grace. Rather, “nature is totally encompassed by grace.” God’s acts are Trinitarian acts of love, which include beholding, giving and revealing, and receiving or adoring.

But whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens... where ‘faith’ and ‘knowledge’ are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of ‘knowledge’, and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation — a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated — a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique.[55]

Social issues and ethics cannot be separated from spirituality. Von Balthasar demonstrated this in his personal life in the Community of St John, which he co-founded with Adrienne von Speyr. Medard Kehl writes about von Balthasar’s views of how social issues relate to spirituality:

God’s love for the world in the gift of his Son and in the sacrament of his church—should be recognized in its original “infolding” (Ein-falt), so that it can then also be continually recognized again in is detailed “un-foldings” (Aus-faltungen, i.e. in the most varied expressions of faith, dogmatic formulas, sacramental and liturgical forms, social and legal structures of the community of faith, etc.) For Balthasar the original synthesis has its place in theology ahead of all analyses (of a historical-critical, hermeneutical, historical-doctrinal, psychological, and sociological kind). This synthesis integrates in itself all individual moments of faith and brings them forth from itself, but without ever releasing them from this unity (Von Balthasar Reader, 35).

Note how Von Balthasar speaks of the “unfolding” of a theoretical expression from out of the central root unity or synthesis. Dooyeweerd would not use the word ‘synthesis’ to refer to this root unity, and Dooyeweerd would also object to referring to the central root unity as ‘theological.’ And yet we can see many similarities here in an unfolding from a root unity [56]. And for both Dooyeweerd and von Balthasar, this root unity is situated in the supratemporal, a time-beyond. As von Balthasar says,

Full integration of temporal life could only be hoped for in a time-beyond in which, with the eternal significance of every moment, there would also be salvaged the sense of direction of the river of time (von Balthasar Reader, 69).

And von Balthasar stresses the need to overcome our ego in favour of a transcendent selfhood:

Just as the Buddhist has to dissolve the illusion of his I as a substantial center in order to catch sight of the absolute, so, too does the Christian have to dissolve the geocentricity of his self-awareness, in which everything revolves about his psychological ego in favor of a heliocentric, i.e., theocentric worldview, in which the created and graced is both received purely from the central sun of divine grace and allows itself to be determined by it. So much is this divine center the absolute that the word “objective’ in the worldly sense is not applicable to it. It is, according to Augustine, at once “more inward than I am to myself and more sublimely superior to me,” and for this reason coming to me from within as well as from above-without. But in this coming the finite I is posited, affirmed, loved; and indeed not only my I, but that of all persons who in their essential uniqueness and irreplaceability are a radiation of the one God, and indeed become that more the closer they all come to God. Here the particularity of Christian in contrast to Eastern meditation becomes completely evident. (Von Balthasar Reader, 340).

Elsewhere, von Balthasar says that relation between nature and grace is exemplified in the attempts to relate theology to the other sciences. He refers to Baader’s attempt to heal this split:

But the work of transposing the concept of the physical and mental sciences, and articulating them with theology, was bound to become more and more difficult, and post-scholastic theology rarely applied itself to the task (in their own way, Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz and Baader did, but they were not taken up into official theology). For the most part, it confined itself to using a natural theology, antecedent to biblical theology, as a basis for a rational exposition of the latter. [57]

Other favourable comments regarding Baader can be found in von Balthasar’s The Glory of the Lord. He refers to Baader in his comments on Soloviev’s style of theological aesthetics. [58]

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

We have already discussed how Pope Benedict was influenced by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac. And like those theologians, Pope Benedict also had a positive appreciation of the work of Franz von Baader. In particular, he agreed with Baader’s rejectin of the autonomy of thought. In his 1968 work, Introduction to Christianity (Einführung in das Christentum), Pope Benedict, or Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was, refers to Baader’s statement that it is just as absurd “to deduce the knowledge of God and the knowledge of all other intelligences and non-intelligences from self-knowledge (self-awareness) as to deduce all love from self-love.” Ratzinger says

Here we are confronted with a sharp rejection of the mode of thinking adopted by Descartes, whose grounding of philosophy in self-awareness (“Cogito, ergo sum”: I think, therefore I am) has decisively influenced the fate of the modern mind right down to the present-day forms of transcendental philosophy. Just as self-love is not the primordial form of love but at the most a derivative of it, just as one has only arrived at the specific nature of love when one has grasped it as a relation, that is, something coming from another, so, too, human knowledge is only reality when it is being known, being brought to knowledge and thus again “from another”. […] That is why Baader consciously and quite rightly, changed the Cartesian “Cogito, ergo sum” into “Cogitor, ergo sum”: not “I think, therefore I am,” but “I am thought, therefore I am”. Only from man’s being known can his knowledge and he himself be understood (Ratzinger 2004, 246-7).

As we have seen, both Przywara and Von Balthasar also refers to Baader’s idea that our knowledge is not autonomous, but is based on our being known by God. Pope Benedict follows in this same tradition, at least with respect to this issue.

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Endnotes

[1] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Centrum en omtrek: De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee in een veranderende wereld,” Philosophia Reformata 72 (2007) 1-20. For a translation of this lecture and the discussion that followed, see “Center and Periphery: The Philosophy of the Law-Idea in a changing world,” online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/ hermandooyeweerd/1964Lecture.html] [‘1964 Lecture’ and ‘1964 Discussion’].

[2] Michael Fr. J. Marlet S.J.: Grundlinien der kalvinistischen “Philosophie der Gesetzidee” als christlicher Transzendentalphilosphie (Munich: Karl Zink Verlag, 1954). Marlet defended this thesis at the Gregorian University, Rome.

[3] G.C. Berkouwer: “Identiteit of conflict? Een poging tot analyse,” Philosophia Reformata 21 (1956), 1-44.

[4] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Het Oecumenisch-Reformatorisch Grondmotief,” Philosophia Reformata 31 (1966), 3-15, at 14-15.

[5] See also Dooyeweerd’s use of the phrase, “key of knowledge” in his book In the Twilight of Western Thought, (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1968). See my discussion of this issue in my article “Image of God and Wisdom of God; Theosophical Themes in Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy,” online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/ Imagination.html] [‘Imagination’], especially Appendix D, pages 170-176, where I set out various excerpts from Twilight.

[6] Herman Dooyeweerd: “Het Oecumenisch-Reformatorisch Grondmotief,” Philosophia Reformata 31 (1966), 3-15, at 14-15. This was Dooyeweerd’s farewell lecture on October 15, 1965.

[7] See J. Glenn Friesen: “The Mystical Dooyeweerd: The relation of his thought to Franz von Baader,” online at [http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000088/ index.html]; “The Mystical Dooyeweerd Once Again: Kuyper’s Use of Franz von Baader,” online at [http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000130/index.html]; both in Ars Disputandi, Vol. 3, (2003), and J. Glenn Friesen (2005): “Dooyeweerd and Baader: A Response to D.F.M. Strauss,” [http://www.members.shaw.ca/
hermandooyeweerd/Strauss.html].

[8] Leo Mietus: Gunning en de theosofie: Een onderzoek naar de receptie van de christelijke theosofie in het werk van J.H. Gunning Jr. van 1863-1876, (Gorinchem: Narratio, 2006) Reviewed by J. Glenn Friesen in Philosophia Reformata 72 (2007), 86-91, online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/aevum/Gunning.html].

[9] Marlet 30, fn36, citing Herman Dooyeweerd: De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935-36) [‘WdW’]. See WdW III, 626. This was translated and revised as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997; Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969; first published 1953) [‘NC’].. The corresponding reference is at NC III, 783

[10] Herman Dooyeweerd: “De Kentheoretische Gegenstandsrelatie en de Logische Subject-Objectrelatie,” Philosophia Reformata 40 (1975) 83-101 [‘Gegenstandsrelatie’]. Online at: [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Mainheadings/Kentheoretische.html]. In this same article, Dooyeweerd criticizes those who have rejected the idea of the Gegenstand-relation. Dooyeweerd says that their thought results in a logicism with genuine antinomies, and that their epistemology is indistinguishable from that of modernism.

[11] Herman Dooyeweerd; Encyclopedia of Legal Science (1946), 12, online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Encyclopedia.html]:

The meaning synthesis of scientific thought is first made possible when our self-consciousness, which as our selfhood is elevated above time, enters into its temporal meaning functions. This supratemporal selfhood of our human existence is the religious root of our personality, which in its individuality participates in the religious root of the human race. (italics Dooyeweerd’s).

[12] ‘Intentional’ is not to be understood in Husserl’s sense of a directness to outer objects, but rather to an inner object formed by our imagination when our supratemporal selfhood analyzes its temporal functions. See my discussion of intentional acts proceeding from our supratemporal selfhood in “Imagination,” p. 56ff.

[13] “Theoretical intuition is operative in deepened analysis itself, and only by its intermediary is theoretical thought able to analyse the “Gegenstand” in the intermodal synthesis of meaning. In this intuition I implicitly relate the intermodal meaning-synthesis to the transcendent identity of the modal functions I experience in the religious root of my existence” (NC II, 478-79; WdW II, 413). For an extended discussion of this identity between inner and outer, see my article “Imagination” at pages 122-126.

[14] The idea “our own” has not been sufficiently explored by reformational philosophy. See my Glossary Entry for ‘own’ at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/ Definitions/Own.html]. It is our intuition that makes us aware of our temporal functions as “our own.” Dooyeweerd says that even the identification of a sensation such as a sweet taste would be impossible without intuition:

How could I really be aware of a sweet taste, if I could not relate this sensory impression to myself, by means of my intuition entering into the cosmic stream of time? (NC II, 478; WdW II, 413).

[15] Cosmological consciousness (theoretical) is contrasted by Dooyeweerd with cosmic consciousness (which is merely pre-theoretical and naïve). See my Glossary entry at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Consciousness.html].

[16] “In this [theoretical] intuition I implicitly relate the intermodal meaning-synthesis to the transcendent identity of the modal functions I experience in the religious root of my existence” (NC II, 478-79; WdW II, 413).

[17] It is a mistake to view the Philosophy of the Law-Idea as a philosophy of universals that are abstracted from individual things. That is an Aristotelian view of theory. See Friesen 2010. Marlet is correct: what is important for Dooyeweerd is the concentric movement towards the supratemporal center, by which the peripheral temporal reality is fulfilled.

[18] Marlet seems to distinguish between individual supratemporal heart and supraindividual religious root. Dooyeweerd does speak of the root as supraindividual. But it can be disputed whether his idea is of an individual supratemporal heart or whether a supratemporal supraindividual heart is individuated solely in time:

And within the temporal horizon man's self-consciousness does not from the outset have a static individuality. Rather it becomes more and more individual. This takes place in a process of development which is also historically determined (NC II, 594; WdW II, 529).

[19] Note the difference between idea and concept.

[20] Herman Dooyeweerd: De Crisis der Humanistische Staatsleer, in het licht eener Calvinistische kosmologie en kennistheorie (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1931), 103:

De mogelijkheid der zin-synthesis is slechts op te klaren vanuit de door ons vroeger summier aangegeven opvatting i.z. de structuur van het zelfbewustzijn. Het zelfbewustzijn transcendeert den kosmischen tijd, inzooverre de individueele zelfheid deel heeft aan den religieuzen wortel van het menschengeslacht, van welks zinvolheid alle tijdelijke zin-functies (zoowel natuur- als geestesfuncties) slechts tijdelijke zinbrekingen zijn. Het is immanent aan den kosmischen tijd, in zoovere onze bewustzijnsfuncties in de kosmische tijdsorde zijn ingevlochten. De a-logische zinfuncties zijn niet vreemd aan het zelfbesuwtzijn. Ze zijn alle gezamenlijk eigen aan onze zelfheid. Alleen daarom kunnen wij ze in hare zin-wetmatigheid leeren kennen.

[21] “Therefore by maintaining the Gegenstand-relation, the theoretical Idea relates the theoretical concept to the conditions of all theoretical thought, but itself remains theoretical in nature, thus within the bounds of philosophic thought.” Herman Dooyeweerd: Encyclopedia of the Science of Law (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) [‘Encyclopedia’], 80-81, re-translated by myself. See also my glossary entry for ‘intuition,’ online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Intuition.html].

[22] See Herman Dooyeweerd: “Roomsch-katholieke en Anti-revolutionaire Staatkunde,” February, 1923. There are excerpts in Marcel Verburg: Herman Dooyeweerd. Leven en werk van een Nederlands christen-wijsgeer (Baarn: Ten Have, 1989) at 53.

[23] In his Encyclopedia of the Science of Law, Dooyeweerd distinguishes between subjective presuppositions [vooronderstellingen] and “that which is presupposed” [de vooronderstelde]. The transcendental Ideas of Origin, Totality and temporal coherence, are “subjective presuppositions.” They only point towards “what is presupposed.” Subjective presuppositions are our Ideas as hypotheses, pointing towards the supratemporal a priori conditions that make our Ideas possible. These a priori conditions are “what is presupposed,” but they are not themselves Ideas or even propositions. Unfortunately, the present translation of the Encyclopedia does not make this clear. See my article "Dooyeweerd's Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: Problems with the present translation,” online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/ Translation.pdf].

[24] Marlet, 122, citing Johannes B. Lotz: “Das Gedächtnis.” Geist und Leben 23 (1950, p. 126-127. Lotz is also the author of the book Meditation: Der Weg nach innen (1954).

[25] W. Couturier: Het menselijk lichaam in het Thomistish denken BP 11, (1950), 109.

[26] See H. Robbers: “Christelijke filosofie in katholieke en calvinsitische opvatting,” Studiën. Tijdschrift voor godsdienst, wetenschap en letteren 67 (1935) 85-99; Studiën 68 (1936) 152-153. Also “Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte,” Studiën 65 (1937) 324-331. Both cited by Henk Geertsema, “Dooyeweerd in discussie met de rooms-katholieke filosofie,” Herman Dooyeweerd 1894-1977. Breedte en actualiteit van zijn filosofie, (Kampen: Kok, 1994), 228-254, at 250 fn 25.

[27] Karl Rahner: Review of Hermann Spreckmeyer: Die philosophische Deutung des Sündenfalls bei Franz Baader (1938). Reviewed in: Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 63 (1939), S. 447. Included in Rahner: Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 8

[28] Jean Maréchal: Études sur la psychologie des Mystiques. (Paris, n.d.). Translation. Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics. (London, 1927).

[29] Dooyeweerd Archives, Amsterdam (Lade I, 3).

[30] See my review of Mietus’s book on Gunning (endnote 8).

[31] See J. Glenn Friesen: “Monism, Dualism, Nondualism: A Problem with Vollenhoven’s Problem-Historical Method,” online at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/ hermandooyeweerd/Method.html]. “Advaita,” meaning “not-two,” rejects all dualisms. But that does not make it equivalent to monism. “Not-two” is not equivalent to “only one.” Dooyeweerd speaks of a duality-unity [twee-eenheid] for the relation of our supratemporal heart and temporal body.

[32] See Herman Dooyeweerd: “Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer,” Philosophia Reformata (1939), 193-232.

[33] See my review of Mietus’s book on Gunning (endnote 8).

[34] See my review of Johan Stellingwerff, Geschiedenis van de Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte, (Stichting voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte, 2006), reviewed in Philosophia Reformata 71 (2006) 193-195.

[35] Henri de Lubac: Catholicism, tr. L.C. Sheppard (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1950, originally published Paris: Cerf, 1938), 166.

[36] Dooyeweerd was of the opinion that the encyclical was in fact directed against la nouvelle théologie (1964 Lecture, 9).

[37] Henri de Lubac: The Mystery of the Supernatural, tr. Rosemary Sheed (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1967, originally published as Le mystère du surnaturel, 1965), xi.

[38] Henri de Lubac: La Posterité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (Namur: Le Sycomore, 1987), vol. I, 381, referring to Baader’s letters in Eugene Susini: Lettres Inédites de Franz von Baader (Paris: J. Vrin, 1942), 294, 392.

[39] See “Kuyper use of Franz von Baader,” fn 7 above.

[40] Medard Kehl, Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar: The von Balthasar Reader, ed. Medard Kehl and Werner Löser, tr. Robert J. Daly and Fred Lawrence (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 18.

[41] Przywara opposed to any idea of grace as “ein Aufhören von Natur oder als Fordauer eines unausgeglichenen Dualismus zwischen “Gnade für sich” and “Natur (als verdammliche) in sich.” Erich Przywara: “Die Problematiek der Neuscholastiek,” Kantstudien (1928), 73-98, at 97. It should be noted that Dooyeweerd certainly had access to Kantstudien. Some copies can be found among his personal library, now at the Institute for Christian Studies.

[42] Ibid. 73.

[43] Ibid. 93. “nicht eigenmächtig cogita-re, sondern letzlich empfangendes und bewegtes cogita-ri.”

[44] Ibid. 94. “ein Wissen, das bereits Glauben ist.”

[45] Ibid. 94. “Über-sich-hinaus-weisen”, “bereitschaft zu Offenbarung.”

[46] Erich Przywara “Das Augustinische Geistesmotive und die Krise der Gegenwart” Kantstudien, 1930.

[47] At the time of his death in 1988, von Balthasar was about to be made a Cardinal by John Paul II.

[48] Together with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), Von Balthasar founded the journal Communio.

[49] Hans Urs von Balthasar: Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003).

[50] Cf. Dooyeweerd’s idea of the restless nature of temporal creation and of our supratemporal heart. See my Glossary entry on ‘restless’ at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Rest.html].

[51] Stratford Caldecott, “An Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar,” online at [file://localhost/Research/Von%20Balthasar/re0486.html]. Cf. Dooyeweerd’s views on the coinciding of the modal aspects. See my Glossary entry for ‘coincidence’ at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Coincidence.html].

[52] Hans Urs von Balthasar: Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 54-55.

[53] See Ramon J. Betanzos: Franz von Baader’s Philosophy of Love (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 1998). Baader says that knowledge and love are indissolubly linked (Werke I, 166).

[54] Anonymous [Valentin Tomberg]: Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2002), Afterword by Hans Urs von Balthasar, 661). An excerpt from this Afterword is available online at [http://www.medtarot.freeserve.co.uk/balthasar.htm].

[55] Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Glory of the Lord, (Ignatius Press, 1991) I, 114-15.

[56] See Glossary entry for ‘unfolding’ at [http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/ Definitions/Opening.html].

[57] Hans Urs von Balthasar: Word and Redemption (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 56.

[58] Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Glory of the Lord, vol 3: Soloviev Style I and II,

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Aug 1/08
Revised Jul24/11