Human nature as unity

Berkouwer notes “Scripture doesn’t talk about man in the abstract, but man in his relation to God” (195).

Biblical use of the word “soul.”

Sometimes it is “nefesh,” meaning life and can refer to man himself.  Berkouwer rejects that “soul” is a “localized religious part of man” (201).  The Bible’s interchangeable usage between soul and life should draw attention to the fact that the “heart” is of primary importance:  “The heart shows forth the deeper aspect of the whole humanness of man, not some functional localization in a part of man which would be the most important part” (202-203).

Concerning anthropological dualisms

Such a view sees the soul as the “higher” part, closer to God.  Leads to ascetism.  However, evil in the bible is never localized in a part of man.

Bavinck attacks trichotomy because Scripture knows of no original dualism between spirit and matter (209).    The trichotomist sees the soul as mediating between body and spirit (find Damascene’s comment that the soul is higher point, cf Bruce McCormack, Engaging the Doctrine of God).

Dualism and duality are not identical (211).  We can speak of a duality in God’s creation man and woman, without positing an ontological dualism between them (this is where Maximus and Jakob Boehme err).  “Duality within created reality does not exclude harmony and unity, but is exactly oriented towards it” (211).

Does soul and body involve a tension, and if so that would make it a dualism?  If it does involve a tension, we must reject not only trichotomy, but dichotomy.

Per the confessions and creeds, “there is a great difference between non-scientific references to a dual aspect of human nature and a thesis that man is composed of two substances, body and soul” (213-214).

The Dooyeweerdians

They oppose the idea that all the rich variation of humanness can be forced into two substantial categories.

Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker defines substance as the “systatic core of man, that which functions in all spheres” (H.G. Stoker, Die nuwere Wijsbegeerte aan die Vrije Universiteit, 1933, 40ff.).

For the Dooyeweerdian critique, matter can never be an independent counter-pole to form.

Immortality of the Soul

Genuine and real life in Scripture is life in communion with God.  The philosophical notion of “immortality of the soul” calls death a lie and misunderstands the judgment of God (250).

The main contention of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd whether there was a natural immortality based on an essence abstracted from its relation to God, from which we can draw further conclusions, such as the soul’s “indestructibility” (249).

Per Van der Leuw, there is no continued existence of the soul as such after death, “but a continuation of the contact point by God even though death” (Onsterfelijkheid of Opstanding, 25 quoted in Berkouwer 252).

• The problem of what happens when we die does not involve a purely spiritual salvation but can only be answered in the context of death and the Day of Judgment (Althaus).

Is immortality of the soul correlative with the substantial dualism of mind-body?  This dichotomy raises substantial (pun?) problems and questions (255):

• When the “soul” is separated from the body, what activities is it still able to carry out?
• If the body is the organ of the soul (as in Aquinas), and the soul needs the body to carry out its functions, how can the soul know or do anything after death?
  • Dooyeweerd notes that the psychic functions are indissolubly connected with the total temporal-cosmic relationship of all modal functions and cannot be abstracted from this relationship.
  • Thus, we have a “living soul” which does not live.
  • Rather, with Dooyeweerd we should speak of a duality which is supra-temporal in the religious center of man (heart) and the whole temporal-functional complex.
  • Dooyeweerd does say that the soul continues as a form of existence with an individuality structure (Berkouwer 257n. 33).

Does Dooyeweerd’s school give us a “psychology without a soul?”

• No, for Dooyeweerd says we cannot view man’s essence “in itself” and then tack it onto a relation with God.

Dichotomy and Trichotomy: on the nature of man

These are notes from various texts on Man’s essence.   A fuller essay comes later.  I advance the thesis–though I will modify it at points at another time–that man is composed of two elements: bshr (flesh) and ruach (cf. A.A. Hodge, p.299ff).

Against Trichotomism:

Definition:  man has three distinct elements–rational spirit, animal soul, and body.

Supposed biblical evidence: 1 Thess. 5:23 (I pray that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless).

However, the NT often uses the words psyche and pneuma interchangeably.  Both are used to designate the soul as the seat of the intellectual faculties (Matt. 16:26).  Both can be used to designate the soul as the animating principle of the body (James 2:26).  Deceased persons are both called psuchai (Acts 2:27) and pneumata (Luke 24:37).

Hodge’s discussion good, but inadequate.

The above was taken from A.A. Hodge’s fine Outlines of Theology.   I agree with him that the bible doesn’t teach trichotomy, but he leaves some issues untreated.  He hasn’t fully broken with the Hellenic scheme of a scale of hierarchy with regard to man’s Soul and Body. He speaks of “higher” and “lower” principles (301).  Though to be fair to Hodge, in rejecting trichotomy he has rightly rejected the heart of Hellenism.

Image and Likeness

By eikon the Fathers understood the natural constitutional powers of man.  By homoiosis they understood the matured and developed moral perfection of man (Hodge 305; Hodge identifies this system but doesn’t address it except to indirectly suggest it is the precursor of the Roman donum superadditum,  Maybe so, but there are differences between the East and Rome on this point, though there are similarities).

Bavinck gives a more satisfactory discussion.  He notes their interchangeable usage in Genesis 1:26 and 5:4; but in 1:27 and 9:6 only the image is referred to.  In Genesis 5:1 and James 3:9 only the likeness (Bavinck II: 532).    Bavinck adds, “Image tells us that God is the archetype, man the ectype; likeness adds the notion that the image corresponds in all parts to the original” (ibid).

Review Bavinck Prolegomena

Bavinck’s project consists of drawing upon the strengths of the Magisterial Protestants while formulating theology in response to the modernist crisis of his day.  To do so, he realized he could not slavishly mimic older platitudes and simply “hope for the best.”   Bavinck represents a very exciting yet somewhat embarrassing hero for modern Calvinists.  Exciting, because his work is simply awesome and coming into English for the first time ever.  Embarrassing, because modern Calvinists generally dislike the movement “neo-Calvinism,” yet Bavinck is the unofficial godfather of it.

Bavinck takes the traditional terminology of principia, yet in the background is an ever-present urgency to respond to modernism.   Therefore, he takes the terminology and reframes it around the neo-Calvinist slogan, “Grace restores Nature.”  There is an antithesis and dualism, to be sure, but it is not between nature and grace, but sin and grace.

Principia

God himself is the principle of existence for theology (principium essendi).  Objective revelation of God in Christ is recorded in the Scriptures and this is the external source of knowledge (externum principium cognoscendi).   The Holy Spirit is the iternal source of knowledge.   This leads Bavinck to a line he repeats throughout the book:  there must be a corresponding internal organ to receive the external revelation.  This anticipates the later Reformed Epistemology school.

Contrary to the convertskii, everyone’s reception and evaluation of his or her ultimate authority will be subjective in some sense.   One often hears the refrain, “You Protestants make yourself the Pope and judge of authority while we simply submit to the Church.”  Unfortunately, at one time this convertskii had to make a decision–using his own sinful Western-influenced reason–between Rome, EO, Assyrian Orthodoxy, Monophysitism and Nestorianism.  Whatever the external source of knowledge-the Church, God’s Revelation, etc.–the religious subject will have to respond to it.  Since the subject is responding, the response and evaluation is, quite naturally, subjective.   Bavinck hits a grand slam on this point.

Circular Reasoning and First Principles

Bavinck does not try to hide the fact of circular reasoning.  He asserts, quite rightly, that first principles in any science are by definition circular.  If they were proven by other principles, they would not be first principles!  With this acknowledged, Romanism and Orthodoxy are in no better position than Protestantism.  Positing either the Pope or the Church as the external principle of knowledge is highly laughable–and bears witness to my argument given that few even try to do that.

Towards the Future of Reformed Epistemology and Apologetics

It’s obvious that Van Til read Bavinck.  It is also obvious, if perhaps less so, that the Reformed Epistemologists follow in Bavinck’s train.   It’s interesting that while Van Til drew heavily from Bavinck, I don’t think they are always saying the same thing on apologetics.   Bavinck used the categories of presuppositionalism, but he knew when to stop the train.  I think he kept himself from many of what would later be some of Van Til’s errors, or at least weak points.

Criticisms

The book isn’t always easy to read.  If the reader does not have a background heavy in European Rationalism, many of Bavinck’s sparring partners will be over one’s head.  Conversely, if one does have such a background in those disciplines, then there is little point to read Bavinck on them, since he is merely given a cursory reading of them.

Are you using the term “mysteries” correctly?

Does “mysteries” in theology refer to:

a.  the sacraments
b. articles of faith which can’t be proven by pure reason (Vatican 1)
c. things which were unknown in the previous dispensation

?

Bavinck answers, “But this mystery is so called, not because it is still hidden in the present, but because it had been unknown n the past.  Now–of all things–it has been made public by the gospel of Christ (Rom. 16:25, Col. 1:26; 1 Cor 4:1 et al) and from now on will be increasingly manifest in history” (I: 620).