Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd Linked Glossary of Terms

© J. Glenn Friesen 2003, 2004

Linked Glossary of Terms
(references to De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, unless indicated. See concordance for correlation with pages in the New Critique. The concordance is in pdf format.)

In the central religious dimension, we experience the fullness of meaning. In the fullness of meaning, the aspects coincide in a radical unity (NC I, 106). This coincidence is not a logical identity but a fullness (I, 44, 71).

Coincidence as the coming together in fullness is the reverse of the process of differentiation by the prism of cosmic time.

Both the law-side and the subject-side of temporal reality have a central sense. The religious center of the law-side is the central revealed law, just as the religious center of the subject-side is the heart ("Das natürliche Rechtsbewusztsein und die Erkenntnis des geoffenbarten Göttlichen Gesetzes," February 28, 1939, cited by Verburg, 251).

The central law is that of love. The supratemporal unity and totality of meaning is love and service of God and our fellow creatures (NC I, 101).

Dooyeweerd criticizes Cusanus's idea of a coincidence of opposites in the sense of a metaphysical mathematical doctrine (NC I, 199).

If aspects coincide, is there also a coinciding of acts? How many acts are there? Do they coincide in love, or in knowledge? Orthodox theology is divided on that issue.

Dooyeweerd at one point recommends meditation on the cross of Christ as a symbol of the coincidence of temporal meaning in the religious fullness.

Kuyper seems to have an idea of this coincidence in our heart:

Hence the first claim demands that such a life system shall find its starting-point in a special interpretation of our relation to God. This is not accidental, but imperative. If such an action is to put its stamp upon our entire life, it must start from This point, of course, lies in the antithesis between all that is finite in our human life and the infinite that lies beyond it. Here alone we find the common source from which the different streams of our human life spring and separate themselves. Personally it is our repeated experience that in the depths of our hearts, at the point where we disclose ourselves to the Eternal One, all the rays of our life converge as in one focus, and there alone regain that harmony which we so often and so painfully lose in the stress of daily duty.( Lectures on Calvinism, http://www.kuyper.org/stone/preface.html, p. 20, Eerdmans edition)

Baader also refers to different spheres of life that are congruent with each other but yet distinguished from each other:

Jeder Theil einer solchen systematischen Erkenntniss–der Philosophie–ist somit, wie jedes Glied des Organismus, ein Ganzes, ein in sich sich-schliessender Kreis, oder die eine Idee ist darin in einer besondern Bestimmtheit. Der einzelne Kreis durchbricht darum–wie diess jedes einzelne Glied des Organismus thus,–die Schranken seines Elementes oder seiner Sonderung, weil er, in sich Totalität ist und das Ganze auf seine Weise repräsentirt, und er begründet hiemit eine weitere Sphäre, d.h. er erstreckt sich virtuell in die Gesammtsphäre des organischen Systems, und dies stellt sich daher als ein Kreis dar von einander deckenden, obschon gradweise unter sich unterschiedenen, in einander begriffenen Kreisen, deren jeder ein nothwendiges bleibendes Moment is, so, dass das System ihrer eigenene Elemente oder Besonderheiten die ganze Idee ausmacht, die ebenso in jedem Einzelnen erscheint. ‘Totum in Toto, et totum in qualibet parte.’ (Weltalter 104).

[Each part of such a systematic knowledge-philosophy–is, just like each limb of an organism, a whole, a sphere enclosed in itself; the one Idea is therein as a particular determination. Just like each individual limb of an organism, each individual sphere therefore breaks through the bounds of its elements or of its separation, because within it is Totality, and it represents the All in its mode, and in doing this it founds a further sphere, that is, it extends itself virtually in the combined spheres of the organic system. The system is arranged as a sphere comprised of other spheres congruent with each other, although distinguished by degrees among themselves and comprised in each other, of which each [sphere] is a necessary continuing moment. From its own elements or particularities, the system constitutes the whole Idea, which also appears in each individual part. ‘Everything in the whole, and the whole in each part.’]

Revised Dec. 27/04