When flipping through Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture (the other books were not helpful in this regard), I noticed an interesting idea in his discussion of science (in that wide definition that Kuyper gave it). Again, I will reproduce the paragraph in full. This is the first paragraph in a subsection of the chapter on Sphere Sovereignty, the subsection being labelled “Creation and Sphere Sovereignty:”
Created reality displays a great variety of aspects or modes of being in the temporal order. These aspects break up the spiritual and religious root-unity of creation into a wealth of colors, just as light refracts into the hues of the rainbow when it passes through a prism. Number, space, motion, organic life, emotional feeling, logical distinction, historical development of culture, symbolic signification, social interaction, economic value, aesthetic harmony, law, moral valuation, and certainty of faith comprise the aspects of reality. They are basically the fields investigated by the various modern special sciences: mathematics, the natural sciences (physics and chemistry), biology (the science of organic life), psychology, logic, history, linguistics, sociology, economics, aesthetics, legal theory, ethics or moral science, and theology which studies divine revelation in Christian and non-Christian faith. Each special science considers reality in only one of its aspects.
--Roots of Western Culture. p. 41-2
At first, I was surprised not to see philosophy in this list anywhere. I thought that maybe Dooyeweerd was simply giving a list of some sciences, and how they relate to created reality. But I think it is more than that. In the glossary of this work (thank you Dooyeweerd Centre for Christian Philosophy publication) the editors of this work point out that for Dooyeweerd, philosophy is not a ‘special science,’ but a foundational science. Its proper task is “the theoretical investigation of the overall systematic integration of the various scientific disciplines and their fields of inquiry.” He also has a more specialized definition as well: “he points out that all philosophy is rooted in a pretheoretical religious commitment and that some philosophical conception, in turn, lies at the root of all scientific scholarship.” Thus philosophy is the base discipline, in which all of the others are rooted and systematized.
This, in turn, would explain Douma’s critique of how the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea (PCI) views theology: “The word ‘theological’ often functions as a disqualifying adjective in the writings of the PCI. Something is theological and thus faulty or of no value for philosophy.” While Douma admits that there are some PCI thinkers who view theology differently, the over-all picture received is that theology, as a science (if it is even that…) is of a lesser sort than philosophy, and so has nothing to add or say in the philosophical sphere, while philosophy does have a voice in the theological sphere (if we can use the term ‘sphere’ here).
I am not too sure about Dooyeweerd’s definition of theology, though. I am reasonably sure that he takes his definition of theology (that which studies divine revelation) from Kuyper’s Principles of Sacred Theology, which I discussed in a previous post. Kuyper argues that theology is, in essence, coming to know God. But this seems too reductionistic—that is the heart of theology, but not the whole science of theology.
Theology, in order to ‘get to know God’ must necessarily deal with many other things. It focuses, to be sure, on God’s revelation (and therefore exegesis ought to be the foundation of theology) but how to handle and understand this revelation is of immediate relevance to theology. But, I suppose, it could be argued that this is philosophy, and how theology views scripture is a philosophical issue (a philosophy of revelation, so to speak). This is an problem that I am not sure I can answer at this time. Maybe it is here that the branches of the two trees become horribly intertwined beyond the point of separation. If it is the role of philosophy at this point, is it philosophy proper, or a theologically subservient philosophy (philosophical theology perhaps).
On a related note, in my readings the question was asked a couple of times, whether there could actually be such a thing as Christian philosophy. I myself answer that question with a resound “Yes.” But then the question comes up, is this philosophy then grounded on theology, or a grounding for theology?
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