THE AMSTERDAM PHILOSOPHY:

This booklet was published by Pilgrim Press in 1972, in the midst of some theological warfare. Representatives of the Amsterdam Philosophy were then taking a militant stance against traditional Reformed theology, and the controversy created partisan battles on the campus of Westminster Seminary, where I was a very young professor. It also threatened to split churches, Christian schools, and other Christian organizations. As a member of a committee of the Ohio Presbytery of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I was asked to write a brief study of the movement, and the booklet resulted. Originally it was published together with another essay by Leonard Coppes, the Chairman of the Committee.

As I read the booklet today, I think my tone was far too shrill. The booklet also contains far too much smart-alecky stuff. I suppose I could have entirely rewritten it, but that would have made my 1972 efforts look better than they were. I prefer now to let readers judge me as I deserve, warts and all. I also think that the basic points of the pamphlet were never answered, though I received a lot of invective, and a lot of undocumented charges that I just didn’t know Dooyeweerd. On those issues also, I will let readers judge.

I. BACKGROUND

The Amsterdam philosophy [1] is a movement which over the last (approximately) fifty years has attempted to develop a philosophical system on a radically biblical, radically Christian basis. Its earliest proponents were Prof. Herman Dooyeweerd and his brother-in-law Prof. D. H. Th. Vollenhoven of the Free University of Amsterdam, and Prof. H. G. Stoker, University of Potchefstroom, South Africa. Other names associated with the movement in the Netherlands have been K. J. Popma, J. P. A. Mekkes, H. Van Riessen and J. M. Spier. In North America, for many years, the leading proponent of this movement was generally acknowledged to be Prof. Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. [2] His influence was perhaps the major factor in attracting such younger men as H. Evan Runner (now of Calvin College) and Robert D. Knudsen (now of Westminster Seminary) into the Amsterdam circle. During the same period, other men such as William Young and David H. Freeman (both now of the University of Rhode Island) and T. Grady Spires (now of Gordon College) took considerable scholarly interest in the Amsterdam movement, but maintained a sufficiently critical attitude toward the movement to preclude their being listed here as members of the school. The last ten years have brought many more names into prominence as adherents of the Amsterdam School. At Trinity Christian College of Palos Heights, Ill., we note Calvin Seerveld and Carl T. McIntire, son of the famous radio preacher. A number of “Amsterdam” thinkers can be found at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, such as J - Van Dyk, J. Vander Stelt, and H. L. Hebden Taylor, one of the more prolific publishers of the movement. The Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada, founded specifically for the purpose of advancing this school of thought, boasts the presence of B. Sylstra, James Olthuis, John Olthuis, Arnold De Graaf, and Hendrik Hart. Within the area of our own presbytery, Peter J. Steen advocates his version of the Amsterdam philosophy in his philosophy classes at Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pa. Organizations supporting the goals of the movement are the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship (A.A.C.S.) (formerly the Association for Reformed Scientific Studies) and the National Association for Christian Political Action (N.A.C.P.A.). Influence of this philosophy is strong in the Christian labor movement in Canada, and is being increasingly felt in the Christian school movement in both Canada and the U.S., especially in the National Union of Christian Schools. Developments in the movement can be followed in such periodicals as the scholarly journal Philosophia Reformata (published in the Netherlands), the more popular Vanguard magazine, the N.A.C.P.A. Politikon, and New Reformation (directed at college students, emanating from the Center for Christian Studies, Santa Barbara, California.

Since the movement is so widespread and is growing rather than diminishing in influence, a warning is in order: not all of the comments made about the movement in the following pages will apply to all of its adherents. Nevertheless, these adherents claim to belong to a “school,” a group dedicated to the advancement of certain basic principles and the application of those principles to all areas of life. Such a claim not only legitimizes but necessitates critical evaluation, which is directed toward the principles and goals affirmed in the movement as a whole, and not just toward the viewpoints of individuals.

Another caveat: it will be impossible in this report to more than summarize the issues at stake in this movement. The Amsterdam philosophy, as expounded by Dooyeweerd and Volienhoven especially, is extremely difficult even for people with philosophical training. It is complicated, sometimes unclear, burdened with an often baffling technical terminology. Occasionally it is said that it would take a lifetime of study to really understand what Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven are saying. Thus it has been easy for some to dismiss criticisms of these philosophers by saying that the critics have not put in the requisite lifetimes of study and thus do not really understand what they are criticizing. But this dismissal of criticism is far too easy: (1) Few of us have a lifetime to devote to Dooyeweerd. And even fewer of us would be willing to devote that lifetime to Dooyeweerd in the absence of some compelling prima facie arguments demonstrating the potential value of such devotion. Thus, before even considering such a lifetime commitment, it is necessary to develop a critical perspective. We must ask whether or not the Amsterdam philosophy can make a prima facie case for itself, whether it shows sufficient promise to warrant our more profound attention, either as its partisans or as its critics. If this report, therefore, carries on its arguments to some extent at the prima facie level, that in itself cannot call its value in question. Prima facie criticism, as well as depth-analysis, is necessary in this situation. (2) Although Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven write in a highly technical style, many of their disciples have developed a rhetoric which is vivid, down-to-earth, and has a tremendous appeal to people with little philosophical training. These disciples have raised many issues in the Christian community upon which all Christians have much at stake. May a Christian school adopt an ecclesiastical confession as its basis? Is the Bible reliable when it speaks on matters of science? Does evangelism include the restructuring of social institutions? These are questions in which all Christians have an interest, on which they are all called to take a stand. Even those without the technical tools needed to understand Dooyeweerd must somehow determine what stand they should take. On these issues it is legitimate and necessary for critics of the Amsterdam movement to be just as down-to-earth, just as “popular” as are some of its proponents. (3) A movement, like a man, is known by its fruits. When a movement advocates erroneous positions, positions which can be shown to be unscriptural, then it must be called to account, even by those unable to comprehend the philosophical premises from which those positions are derived.

For the above three reasons, it is both legitimate and necessary for non-philosophers to make a critical appraisal of the Amsterdam philosophy, particularly of its concrete implications for Christian doctrine and life. This fact does not mean that this report will be entirely non-philosophical. It does imply, however, that the arguments of this report cannot be evaded by the observation that they are sometimes on the “popular” level, or by the consideration that they do not always display the most profound technical grasp of Dooyeweerd's categories. And it implies further that non-philosophers in the church may not shrug off these issues by saying, “It's all too complicated for me.” The issues before us are matters of life and death to the church of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, therefore, should be passionately concerned about them.

2. THE APPEAL OF THE MOVEMENT

What is it that makes the Amsterdam philosophy so attractive to Reformed Christians? One thing is surely its emphasis upon God's sovereignty – sovereignty both in the sense of all-controlling decree and in the sense of all-encompassing demand. [3] God is Lord over all, and demands our allegiance in all areas of life. There is no compartment of life where we may assert our autonomy, where we may serve ourselves. We must do all to the glory of God. All of life, therefore, not just formal worship, is “religion” – service to God. In all of our decisions, we decide either for Christ or against Him. These principles reaffirm the Reformation emphasis that every lawful occupation may and should be a “vocation” – a calling of God. All useful work is kingdom work. No one need feel left out of the Kingdom program simply because he has been called to be a farmer rather than a preacher. God still cares about the replenishing and subduing of the earth (Gen. 1: 28; 9:1-7). And God wants us to do our farming, our carpentry, our homemaking, our musical, medical, business work – all our labor – in ways pleasing to Him. There should be Christian businesses, just as much as there should be Christian churches. There should be Christian schools, Christian labor unions, Christian political associations. Nor do the sciences escape the comprehensive demand of our God. Science, too, is not neutral. It too is a human activity which is either good or evil, right or wrong, for God or against Him. Unbelieving scientists and philosophers strive in vain comprehensively to understand God's world. They must fail; for, not knowing the true God, and yet requiring an ultimate criterion of truth, they inevitably deify, and thus distort, some element of the created world. Thus we need Christian philosophers and Christian scientists, if our understanding of God's world is to be true in the deepest sense.

On the other hand, says the Amsterdam philosophy, we must beware of looking upon these academic disciplines as the be-all and end-all of human life. No scholar, not even an academic theologian, has a right to set himself up as a mediator between God and other men. No scholarship, not even academic theology, is necessary for the salvation of men. [4] Even Dooyeweerd's philosophy is only the work of a fallible man, which may not be put on a par with God's Word. [5]

All of these principles are, in our view, scriptural, Reformational, and worthy of our support. And it might also be said that the Amsterdam philosophers make these points with as much eloquence as anyone in Reformed circles – if not more. If this were all there were to the philosophy, then we should all be “Dooyeweerdians”! In fact all of us are Dooyeweerdians – to the extent that we have been helped and enriched by these emphases in the movement, particularly to the extent that we have been inspired by the peculiarly vivid formulations of these principles in the rhetoric of the movement.

3. SUMMARY OF OUR CRITIQUE

The trouble is, however, that these scriptural, Reformational, brilliantly well-expressed principles are not “all there is” in the Amsterdam philosophy. Unfortunately, these emphases are mixed in with others, which in our view are not scriptural, not Reformational, and not particularly clearly expressed, either. That is to say: (1) The writings of this movement are full of unclear statements, invalid arguments, and general intellectual shoddiness. This criticism is not as serious as (2) below, but it is a serious one. Such lack of rigor in a Christian philosophy is not pleasing to God. It will not do for Christians to support a second-rate philosophical system simply because that system claims to be Christian or even because it is Christian in some respects. But further: (2) The writings of this movement contain a substantial amount of demonstrably unscriptural, and therefore false, teaching. These two criticisms will be documented in what follows.

4. COMMON SENSE AND SCIENCE

We hope that the following discussion will not be so technical as to lose the reader's attention at this early point. If it is, the reader is advised to jump ahead, for later sections of this report will be more “practical” in some senses than this one. This one is important, however. The distinction between common sense and science, between “naive experience” and “theoretical thought,” between “pre-theoretical” and “theoretical” [6] is central to the Amsterdam scheme. This distinction is the reason why, in the Amsterdam view, there can be no theoretical knowledge of God or of self. It furnishes the reason why there can be no theoretical study of the central Biblical themes of creation, fall and redemption. It shows us why these central themes must be sharply distinguished from all theological doctrines. It shows us why theology studies only the “result” of a “theoretical abstraction” and never “the full or integral reality” of God. [7] Ultimately, this distinction will show us why Scripture does not speak directly to the scientist without the mediation of philosophy, and why the philosopher has a right to tell the theologian what Scripture may and may not say to him.

Dooyeweerd and the other Amsterdam thinkers clearly want to draw a sharp distinction between “pre-theoretical” or “naive” experience on the one hand, and “theoretical” thought on the other. Sharp, that is, in the sense that every human thought must be classifiable, in principle, as either “naive” or “theoretical.” There is no third category, and there is no overlap.

Now what, precisely, is involved in this distinction? The usual illustrations are fairly straightforward. A child walks through a field on a summer day, looking at the daisies. A botanist walks through the same field, picks a daisy, and takes it home for an experiment connected with his doctoral dissertation. The child “looks,” the botanist “experiments.” Surely there is a difference between these two people in their attitudes toward the daisy! Surely, then there is a difference between ordinary life, where we appreciate daisies as we walk through a field, and theoretical thought, where we study them.

Well, there seems to be a difference! But the matter becomes a bit more complicated when we consider other cases. We will agree that the child looking at the daisies is “naive” or “pre-theoretical,” in some obvious sense. But what about a child who has been told by his teacher to find as many different colored flowers as he can? He wanders through the field, looks at a daisy, writes down “yellow and white.” He looks at a dandelion, writes “yellow”; looks at a rose and writes “red.” Is that theoretical or naive? Well, it certainly isn't the beginning of a doctoral dissertation! It is a matter of simple observation, we might say. Yet it presupposes some learning a knowledge of color – words, an ability to write. Surely this learning is the beginning of what we might call “theoretical equipment.” What of a ninth grader who writes an essay concerning his political philosophy? The essay might consist mostly of “naive” observations – yet these would be on a more sophisticated level than we would expect from a sixth grader! From these illustrations, then, it would seem that “naive” and “theoretical” are not air-tight compartments as the Amsterdam philosophy would suggest, but are rather the two ends of a continuum. All thought is relatively theoretical (in that all thought presupposes some learning, some conceptual equipment); and all thought is relatively naive (our learning is never so perfect that we outgrow our need for simple perception). The illustrations, therefore, would appear to point in a different direction from that which the Amsterdam philosophy suggests.

But of course we must go beyond illustrations and ask precisely how the Amsterdam philosophers define this distinction. Here it is difficult to obtain clarity. Evidently, theoretical thought is felt to be in some sense more “abstract” than naive experience; theoretical thought makes certain “distinctions” which naive experience does not make:

Scientific thought is discriminative, analytical, and antithetical. In our naive experience we are closely in touch with life-in-its-totality or fulness. [8]

This is not to say, however that naive experience makes no analyses, no distinctions of any kind:

In our naive experience we have a naive view of concrete reality. We know how to distinguish a man from an animal and from a plant. We are conscious that family life is something different from Church life. We know that the state possesses other capacities than the Church. [9]

More significantly, naive experience makes distinctions among the various aspects of human experience which Dooyeweerd calls “modal aspects” (on this concept see later discussion):

In naive experience we conceive [a bird's nest] as an individual whole, qualified by this subject-object relation to the bird's life; and this finds expression in the name whereby the thing is symbolically signified.... A plastic work of fine art is experienced as an individual whole, functioning in all the modal aspects of our temporal horizon, but typically qualified by its aesthetic subject-object relation. [10]

Note here that it is in naive experience that we determine what modal aspect “qualifies” a particular object. At first glance, at least, this sort of idea makes naive experience sound rather theoretical!

So then what is the difference between naive experience and theoretical thought? That difference Dooyeweerd and others portray in various ways. The most common, and most promising formulation usually resembles the following:

[In naive experience] we ... experience concrete things and events in the typical structures, of individual totalities which in principle function in all the modal aspects of our temporal horizon in their continuous mutual coherence. Our logical mode of distinction is entirely embedded in this integral experience. Our pre-theoretical logical concepts are only related to things and events as individual wholes, and not to the abstract modal aspects of their empirical reality. [11]

The idea here seems to be that naive experience focuses on things (tables, chairs, trees, rocks, persons) and events (the battle of Waterloo, the invention of printing, Mary Jane's trip to the grocer), while theoretical thought focuses on aspects of things (number, space, movement, economic value, aesthetic beauty, etc.). We say “focuses” because Dooyeweerd has said that naive experience does make certain distinctions among these aspects, and has some interest in them (next to last quote). The trouble here, though, is that “focusing” is a relative concept. One can be more or less “focused” on something. All we have said so far is that naive experience is relatively more interested in things and events while theoretical thought is relatively more interested in aspects (aspects, of course, of things). And this sort of idea doesn't give us the sharp distinction that Dooyeweerd wants to assert.

Another related type of distinction is found in the assertion that in naive experience, in distinction from theoretical thought,

These aspects are only experienced implicitly in the things and events themselves, and not explicitly in their analytical dissociation and opposition to the logical function of thought. [12]

Here let us consider the distinction between “implicit” and “explicit” (leaving other aspects of this statement aside for the present). The trouble is, again, that this distinction is not sharp enough. Implicitness as opposed to explicitness is a relative matter, characterizable by “more” and “less.” We say, for example that the doctrine of justification by faith is “more explicit” in the New Testament than in the Old. Within the New Testament, we might say that it is more explicit in Luke 18 than in James 2. There is a sense, to be sure, in which we say that it is “perfectly explicit” in a passage like Romans 3:28 that is the extreme end of the continuum. Short of that there are many degrees of explicitness. Thus it appears that if the implicit/explicit distinction is to be our criterion for the naive/theoretical distinction, we will again have only a relative distinction, a difference in degree rather than kind, a continuum rather than a sharp disjunction. Dooyeweerd himself suggests this, again, when he says that naive experience is interested in the modal aspects of the things it perceives. (See above discussion.) If naive experience perceives these modal distinctions, then surely these distinctions are only relatively “implicit” in naive experience. They are to some extent also explicit.

Spier suggests that the two forms of knowledge have different purposes, or goals:

The naive knowing-process ... can have a multiplicity of ends. It can seek to attain an economical end, as in the case of industrial knowledge, or it can have a pistical end, as in the case of pistical knowledge. Scientific knowledge, in contrast, always has an analytical end; it is concerned with a scientific understanding of reality. [13]

As it stands, of course, this quote won't do for a definition, since in the description of “scientific knowledge” the word “scientific” is used, thereby rendering the definition circular. But laying that aside, is it true that scientific knowledge has only one purpose? Is it true that scientific knowledge is purely for the sake of knowledge and never for the sake of gaining wealth or deepening faith? We think not, unless Spier is employing some highly unusual concept of “science” here. And is it the case that naive knowing is not concerned with an understanding of reality? [14] For that matter, if scientific knowing is rooted in naive knowing as Dooyeweerd says it is, then it would appear that some naive knowing, at least, is necessary for (and therefore instrumental to) even a scientific understanding of reality. This suggestion of Spier, then, is no more helpful than the others we have considered in defining clearly the naive/theoretical distinction.

Some of the characterizations of this distinction in the Amsterdam literature suggest a continuum quite “explicitly.” Note:

There are non-scientific and scientific concepts. The former, the naive concept, is strongly bound to the Psychical substratum of sensory representations. The latter frees itself from a Psychical substratum, and under the leadership of the norm of cognitive symbols, it rises above the level of abstraction attained by a naive concept. Because of its high degree of abstraction, a scientific concept gains in clarity but it loses direct contact with life. [15]

Here the expressions “strongly bound” and “high degree” suggest the kind of continuum we have been arguing for. Of course, if Spier had specified the precise degree of abstraction which scientific concepts obtain, then the distinction could have been as sharp as he wishes; but he has in fact not done so. Note also the following:

... theoretical knowledge is a deepened knowledge. Finally, naive knowledge is unsystematic while science continually seeks to systematize and complete its knowledge. [16]

Deepening, of course, is something that can be done by degrees, and we generally assume that it is unless the precise level of deepening is made clear. As for being “systematic,” that too is a matter of degree. Spier himself speaks of naive experience as attempting to attain “precision.” [17] Certainly the knowledge we obtain in everyday life is not chaotic, utterly disorganized. On the other hand, scientific knowledge is never so perfectly systematized that it needs no reconstruction. Naive knowledge appears to be relatively unsystematic, while scientific knowledge is relatively systematic.

We have purposely avoided discussing the more technical formulations of this distinction, simply because these technical formulations presuppose other parts of the Amsterdam system, parts which we are unwilling to endorse. Examples of these are the concepts of “analytical dissociation” [18] and “Psychical substratum” found in some of the above quotations. Another:

(Theoretical thought) displays an antithetic structure wherein the logical aspect of our thought is opposed to the non-logical aspects of our temporal experience. [19]

This formulation, of course, presupposes that one can distinguish clearly between “logical” and “non-logical” “aspects,” something that we do not believe Dooyeweerd has done. Another typical formulation, the idea that scientific thought is characterized by “theoretical abstraction” [20] (as opposed, presumably, to some other kind of abstraction) is no help unless we have a definition of “theoretical”; but that is precisely what we have searched in vain to find!

The real power of the naive/theoretical distinction, however, seems to lie in the connotations of certain images and metaphors constantly employed in the literature. Naive experience is close to its objects, while “in science we maintain a certain distance between ourselves and the object of our investigation.” [21] Science tries to “grasp” its objects which in turn “offer resistance” to it. [22] Theoretical thought “sets things apart,” [23] while naive experience sees them in the “continuous bond of their coherence.” [24] In naive experience, “our logical function remains completely immerged in the continuity of the temporal coherence between the different aspects.” [25] Not only “immerged,” but even “embedded”! [26] Naive experience has an “integral” character. [27] Naive experience distinguishes subject and object, but theoretical thought opposes them, breaking asunder that experience which the naive mind preserves in “unbreakable coherence.” [28] The force of these metaphors is undeniable. We have all had the feeling, as we sit down to write an academic paper, that we are in some sense “backing away” from reality. It seems as though we are tearing apart things that in ordinary life are kept together. We feel that we are, as it were, digging into the universe with our fingers and pulling it apart to see how it works. Occasionally, in personal appearances, an Amsterdam-oriented thinker will expound the naive/theoretical distinction by closing his eyes, becoming very intense, pronouncing his words very slowly and distinctly, and saying “Naive experience does not make thee-oh-rett-i-cal distinctions” or something to that effect. His manner imitates the feeling that we have all had, that theoretical work is something very difficult, abstract, precise, removed from ordinary life, etc. The difficulty, however, is that –paradoxically! – these metaphors do not have sufficient precision to distinguish “theoretically” between one thing called naive experience and another very different thing called theoretical thought. The concept “distance,” when applied to the relation of knower to thing known, is a metaphor, and a metaphor which can be taken in various ways. There are surely senses in which, even in ordinary life, we feel “distant” from the things we perceive. Thus without further explanation, the “distance” metaphor does not clearly distinguish theoretical from naive experience. The same for “grasping,” “setting apart,” “immerged,” “integral,” etc. Even the concept of “coherence” is unclear here, for it is obviously not a literal “coherence” as, e.g., between the parts of a desk. There are kinds of figurative “coherence” in both naive and theoretical types of thinking, and if one does not specify the kind of coherence in view, then the concept cannot help us with the distinction in question. These observations, of course, do not negate the force of the feeling generated by these figures. We do feel that theorizing is more “distant” from the world than ordinary experience – in various senses of “distant.” But that feeling is perfectly consistent with the view that naive experience and theoretical thought are opposite ends of a continuum, that there are degrees of “distance” (and hence of theoreticality), and therefore that the Amsterdam philosophy is wrong on this crucial point.

If we are right, and no sharp distinction can be drawn at this point, does that imply that “the masses who live by naive experience live in a world of illusion…”? [29] No. There is no reason to assume that the theoretical side of our continuum is any more “true” than the naive side. Scientists do and should continually draw upon the observations of “common sense.” But common sense also needs technical refinement if it is to be adequate for certain purposes. Different purposes require different degrees (and kinds) of technical refinement.

We conclude this section with a few observations on the Amsterdam view of the relations between naive experience and theoretical thought. Spier tells us that philosophy, a kind of theoretical thought,

…joins forces with naive experience and focuses its attention upon the concrete reality which we experience in our everyday life. The diverse aspects and coherences directly observed in naive experience are subjected to scientific analysis in philosophy....

The scientific view of the created cosmos is not superior to the naive view of everyday experience. In fact philosophy can not do without naive experience, as it is based upon it. [30]

Philosophy, and by implication all theoretical thought, presupposes the data of naive experience; these data are precisely what the theorist studies. And the theorist should assume, on the Amsterdam view, that the data with which he deals are united in the “continuous bond” of naive experience. The “opposition” between aspects which is distinctive of theoretical thought does not correspond to anything in the real world. The real world, rather, is that of naive experience where this opposition does not exist. [31] Now we have already expressed some bewilderment about the meaning of “opposition” in this context. Apart from that, however, we wish to note that in this scheme theoretical thought requires the use of premises derived from naive experience. Dooyeweerd's writings, in fact, include many references to God and the self, for instance, both of which are said to be beyond all theoretical thought. [32] But does not this fact tend further to blur the distinction between naive and theoretical thought? If a theory presupposes propositions of a “non-theoretical” kind, discusses those propositions, includes them in its theoretical structure, then what actually bars us from calling these propositions “theoretical”? The fact that a theory cannot function without reference to these “non-theoretical” propositions makes us wonder whether the label “non-theoretical” is anything but a linguistic convention. Propositions necessary to a theory are surely “theoretical” in the most important sense of that term.

5. SCIENCE AND TIME

Dooyeweerd places a definite limitation upon the capacity of scientific or theoretical thought: “theoretical thought is bound to the temporal horizon of human experience and moves within this horizon.” [33] At first glance, this statement seems to imply that theoretical thought may not speak of anything eternal or supra-temporal. Thus it could not speak of God, or even of the human self (since Dooyeweerd, though not others in the movement, regards the human self, the heart of man, to be supra-temporal). Dooyeweerd, however, has much to say about God and the self in his philosophical (and therefore theoretical) writings. Therefore, more must be said. How can a theorist talk about God when his thought is “bound to the temporal horizon of human experience”? One could observe, of course, that “bound” is another of Dooyeweerd's metaphors which is never literally explained. To say that theoretical thought is “bound” in such a way is surely not to say that it has no relations with, no dealings with supra-temporal realities. Dooyeweerd in fact clearly teaches the opposite. But then what does it mean?

Perhaps it would be better to start from the other side of the “boundary.” That is, instead of asking the nature of the “bond” between theoretical thought and the temporal horizon, we should ask how supra-temporal realities such as God and the self can function in the context of theoretical thought. Now, perhaps we can get somewhere; for Dooyeweerd here does make some points which can be discussed. Essentially, he maintains that, while God and the self can be spoken of in a theoretical context, they have such special statuses in that context that it is not quite proper to call them elements of the theory. That special status is that of presupposition.

... all conceptual knowledge in its analytical and inter-modal synthetical character presupposes the human ego as its central reference-point, which consequently must be of a super-modal nature and is not capable of logical analysis. [34]

God and the self, Dooyeweerd is saying, are presuppositions of any true theory, and therefore not part of the theory itself. Of course, in a theoretical discussion it is perfectly proper to discuss the presuppositions of the theory in question. But in Dooyeweerd's view, the theory as such does not include its presuppositions.

We find this a rather arbitrary principle. Why is it that the presuppositions of a theory may not be regarded as part of the theory? There is no obvious reason why this should be the case. Traditionally, historians, physicists, philosophers and theologians have frequently discussed the presuppositions of their disciplines, and Dooyeweerd offers no obvious argument, so far as we can see, either to show that this practice is wrong or to show that it cannot be extended to theoretical thought in general.

Dooyeweerd's reply, undoubtedly, would be “Supra-temporal presuppositions are not like other presuppositions.” Supra-temporal presuppositions are transcendental, showing the conditions necessary for the very possibility of thought. They have the character of “central reference point” (last quotation), “Archimedian point,” [35] etc. Somehow, therefore, these presupposed realities must be “beyond” that thought which they render possible. Ah, but that “beyond” brings us back to spatial metaphors again! And indeed, again at this point, the force of Dooyeweerd's conception lies in the emotive connotations of certain figures:

In the process of directing my philosophical thought in the idea towards the totality of meaning, I must be able to ascend a lookout-tower above all the modal speciality of meaning that functions within the coherence of the modal aspects. [36]

The presupposition is a kind of lookout-tower – and the lookout-tower can't be on the ground, else it won't be a lookout tower! So the “central reference point” can't be part of the theory, or it won't be the central reference point for the theory to refer to! Yes, the picture is a compelling one. But of course theories are not landscapes, and therefore the question arises as to how Dooyeweerd's analogy (not only the “explicit” analogy of the above-quoted illustration, but also that “implicit” in his metaphorical definitions) is to be applied. After all, not all presuppositional relationships fit the lookout-tower image with equal ease. The book on my table would not exist if the paper in it were missing: it presupposes the paper. But I would not say that on that account the paper is not part of the book! Nor would I say that the paper must be “above” the book or “beyond” the book as a lookout-tower must be “above” its landscape. A dictionary is a kind of “central reference point” for proper spelling of words; but this fact does not imply that it must be “above” or “beyond” the realm of words. It contains words – words which are spelled according to its own principles. The dictionary legislates for all usage in its language, including its own. Or perhaps one could say: the dictionary is “above” the realm of words indeed, but not in any sense that prohibits its being considered as one group of words among many, not in any sense that prohibits its being discussed as a piece of language. So: why may not the presuppositions of theory be themselves part of a theory? Dooyeweerd does not answer that question with any clarity. Why is it that one cannot form a theory about the basis of theories? Why shouldn't Dooyeweerd's own philosophy be regarded as such a meta-theory? Such a theory, of course, would reflect on its own basis as well as on the basis of other theories. But what is wrong with that?