Thank you  Dr Dooyeveerd for reminding me why I home school

Dr Dooyeveerd

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Editor: Moms, you will have to work hard here but the dividends are enomorous. Dr Dooyeveerd may have had a brain as large as an Elephant but he used every inch to teach us how we can understand God, ourselves this world, Christ and salvation past present and future. Have your heart warmed, your children in one eye and Christ in the other and you will worship after reading below. Suggestion: Summarize in your own words key thoughts ideas and place in a folder labeled Why I home school.

 

Creation, Fall, and Redemption

The second ground motive which shaped the development of western

culture is the motive of creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus

Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit. The christian religion

introduced this motive in the West in its purely scriptural meaning as a

new religious community motive.

The Creation Motive

Already in its revelation of creation the christian religion stands in

radical antithesis to the religious ground motive of Greek and Greco-

Roman antiquity. Through its integrality (it embraces all things created)

and radicality (it penetrates to the root of created reality) the creation

motive makes itself known as authentic divine Word-revelation. God,

the creator, reveals himself as the absolute, complete, and integral origin

of all things. No equally original power stands over against him in the

way that Anangke and Moira (blind fate) stood over against the Olympian

gods. Hence, within the created world one cannot find an expression of

two contradictory principles of origin.

Influenced by its motive of form and matter, Greek philosophy could

not speak of a real creation. Nothing, the Greeks argued, could come

from nothing. Some Greek thinkers, notably Plato, did hold that the

world of becoming was the product of the formative activity of a divine,

rational spirit; but under pressure from the ground motive of culture

religion this divine formation could only be understood according to the

pattern of human cultural formation. With Plato, for example, the divine

mind, the Demiurge, was the great architect and artist who granted the

world its existence. The Demiurge required material for his activity of

formation. Due to the influence of the Greek matter motive, Plato

believed that this material was utterly formless and chaotic. Its origin

did not lie in divine Reason, since the Demiurge was only a god of form

or culture. The Demiurge does not create; he simply furnishes matter

with divine form. Matter retained the self-determining Anangke or blind

fate, which was hostile to the divine work of formation. In Plato's

famous dialogue Timaeus, which dealt with the origin of the world, the

divine Logos checked Anangke merely by means of rational persuasion.

The same principle was expressed by the great Greek poet Aeschylus.

In his tragedy Oresteia, Anangke persecuted Orestes for matricide;

Orestes had killed his mother because she had murdered his father.

Likewise, for Plato's great pupil Aristotle pure form was the divine mind

(nous), but Anangke, which permeated matter, was still the peculiar cause

of everything anomalous and monstrous in the world.

The earlier philosophers of nature gave religious priority to the motive

of matter. Plato and Aristotle, however, shifted religious priority to

the motive of form. For them matter was not divine. Nevertheless, the

god of rational form was not the origin of matter. The god of form was

not the integral, sole origin of the cosmos. Therein lay the apostate

character of the Greek idea of god.

The Greek notion of god was the product of an absolutization of the

relative. It arose from a deification of either the cultural aspect or the

movement aspect of creation. It thus stood in absolute antithesis to God's

revelation in the Bible and to God himself, the creator of heaven and

earth. Consequently, a synthesis between the creation motive of the

christian religion and the form-matter motive of Greek religion is not

possible.

God's self-revelation as the creator of all things is inseparably linked

with the revelation of who man is in his fundamental relationship to his

creator. By revealing that man was created in God's image, God revealed

man to himself in the religious root unity of his creaturely

existence. The whole meaning of the temporal world is integrally (i.e.,

completely) bound up and concentrated in this unity.

According to his creation order, Jehovah God is creaturely mirrored

in the heart, soul, or spirit of man. This is the religious centre and

spiritual root of man's temporal existence in all its aspects. Just as God is

the origin of all created reality, so the whole of temporal existence was

concentrated on that origin in the soul of man before the fall into sin.

Therefore, in conformity with God's original plan, human life in all of its

aspects and relations ought to be directed toward its absolute origin in a

total self-surrender in the service of love to God and neighbour. As the

apostle Paul said: "Whether you eat or whether you drink, or whatever

you do, do all to the glory of God." a Corinthians 10:31. The Revised

Standard Version is the translation used here and elsewhere, unless

indicated otherwise.

Scripture teaches us not only that the heart or soul is the religious

centre of the entire individual and temporal existence of man but also

that each man is created in the religious community of mankind. This is

a spiritual community; it is governed and maintained by a religious spirit

that works in it as a central force. According to the plan of creation, this

spirit is the Holy Spirit himself, who brings man into communion and

fellowship with God.

Not only the temporal existence of human beings but that of the

whole temporal world was concentrated upon the service of God in this

religious root community. God created man as lord of creation. The

powers and potentials which God had enclosed within creation were to

be disclosed by man in his service of love to God and neighbour. Hence in

Adam's fall into sin, the entire temporal world fell away from God. This

is the meaning of apostasy. The earth was cursed because of man.

Instead of the Spirit of God, the spirit of apostasy began to govern the

community of mankind and with it all of temporal reality.

In contrast to mankind, neither the inorganic elements nor the kingdoms

of plants and animals have a spiritual or religious root. It is man

who makes their temporal existence complete. To think of their existence

apart from man, one would need to eliminate all the logical,

cultural, economic, aesthetic, and other properties that relate them to

man. With respect to inorganic elements and plants, one would even

need to eliminate their capability of being seen. Objective visibility exists

only in relation to potential visual perception which many creatures do

not themselves possess.

Along these lines the modern materialists, overestimating the

mathematical, natural-scientific mode of thinking, tried quite seriously

to grasp the essence of nature completely apart from man. Nature, they

thought, was nothing more than a constellation of static particles of

matter determined entirely by mechanical laws of motion. They failed to

remember that the mathematical formulae which seem to grasp the

essence of nature presuppose human language and human thought.

They did not recognize that every concept of natural phenomena is a

human affair and a result of human thinking. "Nature" apart from man

does not exist. In an attempt to grasp "nature" one begins with an

abstraction from given reality. This abstraction is a logical and theoretical

activity which presupposes human thought.

In a similar fashion the scholastic chrisfian standpoint, influenced by

Greek thought, held that inorganic elements, plants, and animals possess

an existence of their own apart from man. The scholastics argued

that the so-called material "substances" depend on God alone for their

sustenance. But in the light of God's revelation concerning creation, this

too cannot be maintained. In the creation order objective visibility,

logical characteristics, beauty, ugliness, and other properties subject to

human evaluation are necessarily related to human sensory perception,

human conceptualization, human standards for beauty, etc. Both the

former and the latter are created. They consequently cannot be ascribed

to God the creator. God related all temporal things to man, the last

creature to come into being. Temporal reality comes to full reality in

man.

The scriptural motive of creation thus turns one's view of temporal

reality around. It cuts off at the root every view of reality which grows

out of an idolatrous, dualistic ground motive which posits two origins of

reality and thus splits it into two opposing parts.

Jehovah God is integrally, that is totally, the origin of all that is

created. The existence of man, created in the image of God, is integrally,

that is totally, concentrated in his heart, soul, or spirit. And this centre of

existence is the religious root unity of all man's functions in temporal

reality — without exception. Likewise, every other creature in temporal

reality is integral and complete. It is not closed off within the few aspects

abstracted by the natural sciences (number, space, motion), but in its

relation to man it is embraced by all of the aspects of reality. The whole

of the temporal world (and not just some abstracted parts) has its root

unity in the religious community of mankind. Hence, when man fell

away from God, so did all of temporal reality.

The Scriptural View of Soul and Body

In the years just prior to the second world war the question as to how we

are to understand the human soul and its relation to the body in the light

of God's Word was fiercely debated in Reformed circles. The arguments

surrounding this question can be understood only with reference to the

absolute antithesis between the scriptural ground motive and the religious

ground motive of Greek thought.

Perhaps some readers impatiently wonder why I devote so much

attention to the ancient ground motive of the Greeks. If it is true that our

modern western culture came forth out of the conflicts and tensions of

four religious ground motives, then it is simply impossible to enlighten

the reader concerning the significance of the antithesis for today if it is

not made clear that the present can be understood only in the light of the

past. The most fundamental doctrines of the christian religion, including

creation, fall, and redemption, are still influenced by the religious

ground motive of ancient Greece. The Greek ground motive still causes

strife and division among Christians today, and it is therefore imperative

that we devote our time and attention to it.

The reader himself must penetrate to the bottom of the problems

pertaining to the antithesis. In so doing he will gradually see that the

christian religion itself fights a battle of life and death against all sorts of

religious ground motives. In every fundamental issue of our times these

motives try to grip the soul of modern man. A battle rages against those

who consciously reject the christian ground motive and also against

those who time after time rob it of its intrinsic strength by accommodating

it to nonscriptural ground motives. It is a battle between the spirit of

the christian religion and the spirit of apostasy. It is also a battle that cuts

right through christian ranks and through the soul of the believer.

What is the soul? Is this a question that only psychology can answer?

If so, why has the christian church considered it necessary to make

pronouncements concerning the relation of "soul" and "body" in its

confessions? Perhaps, one might argue, the church confessions address

the soul's imperishability, the soul's immortality, and the resurrection of

the body in the last judgment, while philosophical psychology deals

with the question as to what the "soul" actually is. This, however,

places the christian church in a strangely contradictory position. What if

psychology comes to the conclusion that a soul in distinction from the

body does not exist? Or what if psychology gives an elaborate theory

concerning the "essence of the soul" that is completely oriented to the

ground motive of Greek philosophy or to the world view of modern

humanism? Does not the christian church build on sand if it honours

philosophical constructions of the soul predicated upon the concepts of

"immortality" and "imperishability"? From its beginning, scholastic

theology tried to push the church into this intrinsically contradictory

position by allowing the Greek conception of the soul into the roman

catholic confessions. But the radical antithesis between the ground motive

of Holy Scripture and the ground motive of Greek "psychology"

32 ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE

cannot be bridged. Any conception of body and soul that is determined

by the Greek form-matter motive cannot stand before the face of revelation

concerning creation, fall, and redemption.

The question as to what we are to understand by "soul" or "spirit" or

"heart" asks where human existence finds its religious root unity. It is

therefore a religious question, not a theoretical or scientific question.

Augustine once made the remark that in a certain sense the soul is

identical with our religious relationship to God. The soul is the religious

focus of human existence in which all temporal, diverging rays are

concentrated. The prism of time breaks up the light from which these

rays come.

As long as we focus our attention on our temporal existence we

discover nothing but a bewildering variety of aspects and functions:

number, space, motion, organic functions of life, functions of emotional

feeling, logical functions of thought, functions of historical development,

social, lingual, economic, aesthetic, jural, moral, and faith functions.

Where in the midst of these functions does the deeper unity of

man's existence lie? If one continually studies the temporal diversity of

the functions corresponding to the different aspects of reality investigated

by the special sciences, one never arrives at true self-knowledge.

One's gaze remains dispersed in the diversity. We can obtain genuine

self-knowledge only by way of religious concentration, when we draw

together the totality of our existence, which diverges within time in a

multiplicity of functions, and focus it upon our authentic, fundamental

relationship to God, who is the absolute and single origin and creator of

all that is.

Because of the fall, however, we can no longer attain this true

self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, according to scripture, is completely

dependent on true knowledge of God, which man lost when apostate

ground motives took possession of his heart. Man was created in God's

image, and when man lost the true knowledge of God he also lost the

true knowledge of himself.

An apostate ground motive forces us to see ourselves in the image

of his idol. For this reason Greek "psychology" never conceived of the

religious root unity of man and never penetrated to what is truly called

the "soul," the religious centre of human existence. When the matter

motive dominated Greek thought, the soul was seen merely as a formless

and impersonal life principle caught up in the stream of life. The

matter motive did not acknowledge "individual immortality." Death

was the end of man as an individual being. His individual life-force was

destroyed so that the great cycle of life could go on.

With orphic thought the soul came to be seen as a rational, invisible

form and substance. It originated in heaven and existed completely

ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE 33

apart from the material body. But this "rational soul" (in scholastic

theology: anima rationalis) was itself nothing but a theoretical abstraction

from the temporal existence of man. It embraced the functions of feeling,

logical judgment and thought, and faith which, taken together,

comprise only an abstracted part or complex of all the various functions.

Together they constituted man's invisible form, which, just like the

Olympian gods, possessed immortality. The material body, on the other

hand, was totally subject to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

The "rational soul" was characterized by the theoretical and logical

function of thought. One finds many differences in the development of

this philosophical conception. Plato and Aristotle, for example, changed

their views throughout the different phases of their lives. I will not

pursue this here, but it is important to mention that their conception of

the rational soul was inseparably related to their idea of the divine. Both

Plato and Aristotle believed that the truly divine resided only in theoretical

thought directed to the imperishable and invisible world of forms and

being. The aristotelian god was absolute theoretical thought, the

equivalent of pure form. Its absolute counterpart was the matter principle,

characterized by eternal, formless motion and becoming.

If the theoretical activity of thought is divine and immortal, then it

must be able to exist outside of the perishable, material body. To the

Greeks the body was actually the antipode of theoretical thought. For

this reason, the "rational soul" could not be the religious root unity of

temporal human existence. Time after time the ambiguity within the

religious ground motive placed the form principle in absolute opposition

to the matter principle. The ground motive did not allow for a recognition

of the root unity of human nature. For Plato and Aristotle, just as

God was not the creator in the sense of an absolute and sole origin of all

that exists, so also the human soul was not the absolute root unity of

man's temporal expressions in life. In conformity with their Greek

conception, the soul's activity of theoretical thought always stood over

against whatever was subject to the matter principle of eternal becoming.

Greek thought never arrived at the truth, revealed first by Holy

Writ, that human thinking springs from the deeper central unity of the

whole of human life. Because this unity is religious, it determines and

transcends the function of theoretical thought.

Scripture says: "Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow

the springs of life" [Proverbs 4:23. "Biblical psychology" may not denature

this to a mere expression of Jewish wisdom or understand it simply

as a typical instance of Jewish language usage. Whoever reads scripture

in this way fails to recognize that scripture is divine Word-revelation

which can only be understood through the operation of the Holy Spirit

out of its divine ground motive.

34 ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE

The pregnant religious meaning of what the soul, spirit, or heart of

man actually is cannot be understood apart from the divine ground

motive of creation, fall, and redemption. Whoever takes his stand upon

this integral and radical ground motive comes to the conclusion that

there is an absolute and unbridgeable antithesis between the Greek

conception of the relation between the soul and the body and the

scriptural conception of the christian religion. The former is determined

by the apostate ground motive of form and matter while the latter

is determined by the scriptural ground motive of creation, fall, and

redemption through Jesus Christ. The former, at least as long as it

follows the Greek ground motive in its dualistic direction, leads to a

dichotomy or split in the temporal existence of man between a "perishable,

material body" and an "immortal, rational soul." The scriptural

ground motive of the christian religion, however, reveals to us that the

soul or spirit of man is the absolute central root unity or the heart of the

whole of his existence, because man has been created in God's image;

further, it reveals that man has fallen away from God in the spiritual root of

his existence; and, finally, it reveals that in the heart or focal point of his

existence man's life is redirected to God through Christ's redemptive

work.

In this central spiritual unity man is not subject to temporal or bodily

death. Here too the absolute antithesis obtains. In distinction from the

Greek-orphic belief in immortality that permeated scholastic theology

by way of Plato and Aristotle, scripture teaches us nowhere that man

can save a "divine part" of his temporal being from the grave. It does

not teach us that an invisible, substantial form or an abstract complex of

functions composed of feeling and thinking can survive bodily death.

While it is true that temporal or bodily death cannot touch the soul or

spirit of man, the soul is not an abstraction from temporal existence. It is

the full, spiritual root unity of man. In this unity man transcends

temporal life.

Fall, redemption through Jesus Christ, and the revelation of creation

are unbreakably connected in the christian ground motive. Apostate

ground motives do not acknowledge sin in its radically scriptural sense;

for sin can only be understood in true self-knowledge, which is the fruit

of God's Word-revelation. To be sure, Greek religious consciousness

knew of a conflict in human life, but it interpreted that conflict as a battle

in man between the principles of form and matter. This battle became

apparent in the conflict between uncontrolled sensual desires and

reason. Sensual desires, which arose from the life stream and ran

through the blood, could be bridled only by reason. In this view reason

was the formative principle of human nature, the principle of harmony

and measure. Sensual desires were formless and in constant flux; they

ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE 35

were beyond measure and limit. The matter principle, the principle of

the ever-flowing life stream, became the self-determining principle of

evil. The orphics, for example, believed that the material body was a

prison or grave for the rational soul. Whoever capitulated to his sensual

desires and drives rejected the guidance of reason. He was considered

morally guilty in this Greek conception. Nevertheless, reason was often

powerless before Anangke, the blind fate that was at work in these

boundless drives. Hence the state with its coercive powers needed to

help the average citizen grow accustomed to virtue.

Modern humanism recognized a battle in man only between sensual

"nature" (controlled by the natural-scientific law of cause and effect)

and the rational freedom of human personality. Man's moral duty was to

act as an autonomous, free personality. If he showed a weakness for

sensual "nature," he was considered guilty. Humanism, however, does

not show man a way of redemption.

The contrasts between matter and form in Greek ethics and between

nature and freedom in humanistic ethics were operative not in the

religious root of human life but in its temporal expressions. However, they

were absolutized in a religious sense. This meant that the Greek and

humanistic notions of guilt depend strictly on the dialectical movements

between the opposing poles of both ground motives. Guilt arose from a

devaluation of one part of man's being over against another (deified)

part. In reality, of course, one part never functions without the other.

We shall see that roman catholic doctrine circumvents the radically

scriptural meaning of the fall with the idea that sin does not corrupt the

natural life of man but only causes the loss of the supratemporal gift of

grace. It does admit that "nature" is at least weakened and wounded by

original sin. But the dualism between nature and grace in the roman

catholic ground motive stands in the way of understanding the real

meaning of sin, even if roman catholic doctrine far surpasses Greek

thought and humanism with respect to the notion of guilt.

Common Grace

In its revelation of the fall into sin, the Word of God touches the root and

the religious centre of human nature. The fall meant apostasy from God

in the heart and soul, in the religious centre and root, of man. Apostasy

from the absolute source of life signified spiritual death. The fall into sin

was indeed radical and swept with it the entire temporal world precisely

because the latter finds its religious root unity only in man. Every denial

of this radical sense of the fall stands in direct opposition to the scriptural

ground motive, even if one maintains the term radical, like the great

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humanistic thinker Kant, who spoke of "radical evil" (Radikal-böse) in

man. Any conception which entails this denial of the biblical meaning of

radical knows neither man, God, nor the depth of sin.

The revelation of the fall, however, does not imply a recognition of an

autonomous, self-determining principle of origin opposed to the

creator. Sin exists only in a false relation to God and is therefore never

independent of the creator. If there were no God there could be no sin.

The possibility of sin, as the apostle Paul profoundly expressed it, is

created by the law. Without the law commanding good there could be

no evil. But the same law makes it possible for the creature to exist.

Without the law man would sink into nothingness; the law determines

his humanity. Since sin therefore has no self-determining existence of its

own over against God the creator, it is not able to introduce an ultimate

dualism into creation. The origin of creation is not twofold. Satan himself

is a creature, who, in his created freedom, voluntarily fell away from

God.

The divine Word — through which all things were created, as we

learn from the prologue to the Gospel of John — became flesh in Jesus

Christ. It entered into the root and temporal expressions, into heart and

life, into soul and body of human nature; and for this very reason it

brought about a radical redemption: the rebirth of man and, in him, of the

entire created temporal world which finds in man its centre.

In his creating Word, through which all things were made and which

became flesh as Redeemer, God also upholds the fallen world through

his "common grace," that is, the grace given to the community of

mankind as such, without distinction between regenerate and apostate

persons. For, also redeemed man continues to share in fallen mankind

in his sinful nature. Common grace curbs the effects of sin and restrains

the universal demonization of fallen man, so that traces of the light of

God's power, goodness, truth, righteousness, and beauty still shine

even in cultures directed toward apostasy. Earlier we pointed to the

meaning of Roman civil law as a fruit of common grace.

In his common grace God first of all upholds the ordinances of his

creation and with this he maintains "human nature." These ordinances

are the same for Christians and nonchristians. God's common grace is

evident in that even the most antigodly ruler must continually bow and

capitulate before God's decrees if he is to see enduring positive results

from his labours. But wherever these ordinances in their diversity

within time are not grasped and obeyed in the light of their religious

root (the religious love commandment of service to God and

neighbour), a factual capitulation or subjection to these ordinances remains

incidental and piecemeal. Thus apostate culture always reveals a

ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE 37

disharmony arising out of an idolatrous absolutization of certain aspects

of God's creation at the cost of others. Every aspect, however, is just as

essential as the others.

God's common grace reveals itself not only in the upholding of his

creation ordinances but also in the individual gifts and talents given by

God to specific people. Great statesmen, thinkers, artists, inventors,

etc. can be of relative blessing to mankind in temporal life, even if the

direction of their lives is ruled by the spirit of apostasy. In this too one

sees how blessing is mixed with curse, light with darkness.

In all of this it is imperative to understand that "common grace" does not

weaken or eliminate the antithesis (opposition) between the ground motive of the

christian religion and the apostate ground motives. Common grace, in fact,

can be understood only on the basis of the antithesis. It began with the

promise made in paradise that God would put enmity between the seed

of the serpent and the seed of the woman out of which Christ would be

born. The religious root of common grace is Christ Jesus himself, who is

its king, apart from whom God would not look upon his fallen creation

with grace. There should no longer be any difference of opinion concerning this

matter in Reformational-christian circles. For if one tries to conceive of

common grace apart from Christ by attributing it exclusively to God as

creator, then one drives a wedge in the christian ground motive between

creation and redemption. Then one introduces an internal split within the

christian ground motive, through which it loses its radical and integral

character. (Radical and integral here mean: everything is related to God in

its religious root.) Then one forgets that common grace is shown to all

mankind — and in mankind to the whole temporal world — as a still

undivided whole, solely because mankind is redeemed and reborn in

Christ and because mankind embraced in Christ still shares in fallen

human nature until the fulfilment of all things. But in Christ's battle

against the kingdom of darkness, Christ's kingship over the entire

domain affected by common grace is integral and complete. For this

reason, it is in common grace that the spiritual antithesis assumes its

character of embracing the whole of temporal life. That God lets the sun

rise over the just and the unjust, that he grants gifts and talents to

believers and unbelievers alike — all this is not grace for the apostate

individual, but for all of mankind in Christ. It is gratia communis, common

grace rooted in the Redeemer of the world.

The reign of common grace will not cease until the final judgment at

the close of history, when the reborn creation, liberated from its participation

in the sinful root of human nature, will shine with the highest

perfection through the communion of the Holy Spirit. God's righteousness

will radiate even in satan and in the wicked as a confirmation of the

absolute sovereignty of the creator.

38 ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE

Shown to his fallen creation as a still undivided totality, the revelation

of God's common grace guards scriptural Christianity against sectarian

pride which leads a Christian to flee from the world and reject without

further ado whatever arises in western culture outside of the immediate

influence of religion. Sparks of the original glory of God's creation shine

in every phase of culture, to a greater or lesser degree, even if its

development has occurred under the guidance of apostate spiritual

powers. One can deny this only with rude ingratitude.

It is the will of God that we have been born in western culture, just

as Christ appeared in the midst of a Jewish culture in which Greco-

Roman influences were evident on all sides. But, as we said earlier, this

can never mean that the radical antithesis between christian and apostate

ground motives loses its force in the "area of common grace." The

manner in which scriptural Christianity must be enriched by the fruits of

classical and humanistic culture can only be a radical and critical one.

The Christian must never absorb the ground motive of an apostate

culture into his life and thought. He must never strive to synthesize or

bridge the gap between an apostate ground motive and the ground

motive of the christian religion. Finally, he must never deny that the

antithesis, from out of the religious root, cuts directly through the issues

of temporal life.

ROOTS OF WESTERN CULTURE 39

TWO

Sphere Sovereignty

The scriptural ground motive of the christian religion — creation, fall,

and redemption through Christ Jesus—operates through God's Spirit as

a driving force in the religious root of temporal life. As soon as it grips a

person completely, it brings about a radical conversion of his life's stance

and of his whole view of temporal life. The depth of this conversion can

be denied only by those who fail to do justice to the integrality and

radicality of the christian ground motive. Those who weaken the absolute

antithesis in a fruitless effort to link this ground motive with the

ground motives of apostate religions endorse such a denial.

But the person who by grace comes to true knowledge of God and of

himself inevitably experiences spiritual liberation from the yoke of sin

and from sin's burden upon his view of reality, even though he knows

that sin will not cease in his life. He observes that created reality offers

no foundation, foothold, or solid ground for his existence. He perceives

how temporal reality and its multifaceted aspects and structures are

concentrated as a whole in the religious root community of the human

spirit. He sees that temporal reality searches restlessly in the human

heart for its divine origin, and he understands that the creation cannot

rest until it rests in God.

 

 

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