126 Chapter 3 Dooyeweerd (1969) perceived the world as a principally coherent creation of the eternal, supra-temporal God, whereby Man is related to Him and His supratemporal reality through the heart. This discovery, not inspired by Kuyper’s systematic works but by his meditations on the Pentecost (Kuyper, 1888/2014), for Dooyeweerd marked a turning point in his life: ‘As I reflected on it, I realized that this insight overturned my whole view of man, and my view of the whole reality in which we live, since all reality has in humanity a central point of concentration’ (in: van Meggelen, 1973). The way in which the Bible discusses the heart does not situate feelings and emotions as the focal point, but rather refers to the very core of being human—that is, the undivided principle of man in his transcendental relation with God. Referring to the opening words of Calvin’s Institution (1536/2008), Dooyeweerd (1969) underlined that real selfknowledge and knowledge of God must go hand in hand. In his New Critique, he articulated this as follows: The heart in its pregnant Biblical sense as religious root and centre of the whole of human existence may never be identified with the function of ‘feeling’ or that of ‘faith’, neither is it a complex of functions like the metaphysical concept of soul which is found in Greek and humanistic metaphysics; it is alien to any dualism between the body (as a complex of natural functions) and the soul (as a complex of psychical and normative functions (…) It is the fulness of our selfhood in which all out temporal functions find their religious concentration and consummation of meaning. (Dooyeweerd, 1969, p. 516) The heart is like the flower bulb as a root entity in which all aspects of believing, thinking, feeling and organic life come together. Dooyeweerd (1969) fiercely resisted all kinds of reductionistic thinking of man because such thinking cuts off this connection to the heart. Not only the separation between philosophy and faith found in Kant but also the scholastic theology within the Christian tradition lead to the separation and even absolutisation of logical reason. The core of Dooyeweerd’s cosmonomic idea is that man, especially due to the transcendental relatedness of his heart, can be neither reduced, nor absolutised, nor approached as a goal in itself. In his essence, man has no independent existence, separated from God or from creation. Responsibility and respect are the core values of human existence. Just like Comenius, for Dooyeweerd the heart as a religious centre relates to the whole world. Parting from the connection to God in broken creation, the battle must be fought with the demonic powers that are active within it. On these core ideas (antithesis, sphere sovereignty, heart as the transcendental centre), Dooyeweerd (1969) based his theory of modal aspects. He stated that all forms of existence are composed of 15 modalities that each
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