131 Christian Anthropology and the (W)Holistic Approach 3 became man and in doing so He became the root unity of totality (p. 27). In Him, everything is created and everything is being renewed (Col. 1:15-18). After these Prolegomena, Troost (2005) considered time and time transcendence. In this part, he depicted the human heart as a transcendental root unity that binds the temporal to the supratemporal and the creation to the Creator. Referring to Proverbs 4:23, he called it a ‘metaphorical or idiosyncratic articulation of what exceeds our understanding’ (Troost, 2005, p. 48) (7). In the heart resides human identity and the ‘whole person’ who keeps existing after physical death (Troost, 2005, p. 49). Then, at the start of several chapters about cosmology, Troost observed that, in the scientific analysis and systematisation of the cosmos, the ‘one, integrative reality of man and world’ (p. 55) cannot be left out. Reformational philosophy has, from the start, paid attention to ‘this all-inclusive interwovenness of (not just the sum of) all diversity in reality’ (Troost, 2005, p. 55). This interwovenness comes directly from the transcendental origin: ‘The divine order of existence, the law of creation, is the principle of the transcendental structure of the created reality, that first enables her concrete existence’ (Troost, 2005, p. 59). Therefore, there is a cosmic order, which is called the creational order by Christians and is known as the Tao or world logos by others. Within this order, man occupies a central position, as described by Troost in several anthropological chapters. Mankind is, in contrast to the animal kingdom, a ‘spiritual totality and unity’ (Troost, 2005, p. 154), a ‘spiritual community in Adam and/or Christ’ (p. 157). The whole creation is, both to its law-side as to its subject-side, via its own religious centre in mankind, inwardly directed at and related to God. Not in a pantheistic or mystical sense (that would be unbiblical philosophical metaphysics or ontology), but ‘in Christ’, and thereby just real and knowable by faith. (Troost, 2005, p. 167) It is for this reason that Reformational philosophy fundamentally protests against every form of closed worldview. The fact that the human Self resides in the heart as an undivided, transcendental unity centre does not mean that it is an isolated centre. Man is man in three relations that go together: the I–self relation, the relation of humanity towards other people and the relation to God. As opposed to the cosmos as an independent and closed whole: Reformational philosophy recognizes a process of unlocking that is pregiven in the nature of creatures, but to a great extent collapsed and closed by 7 Translation from Dutch is mine, as in all other quotations from Troost (2005).
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