Category — Matter-Form Ground Motive

Here is my definition of relevance — knowing the Word and knowing the heart. This means identifying and pressing the antitheses, discerning between the religious ground-motives and those aspects of life that are relative. Identify and press the deep antithesis between the two kinds of men, identify and press the antithesis between the Word and every other worldview. On the other hand, accept truth where you find it, but reject the ground-motives. When minsters start to trade what is absolute (the Word) for what is relative (man’s temporal-aspectual experience), make the relative absolute, or dismiss truth because it is spoken by an enemy, the battle is lost.

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart”.
— Hebrews 4:12

“Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. …As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole”.
— Aristotle, The Poetics, Part VIII {italics mine}

Hero or action? Scriptural hermeneutics of the reformational type might deny that there is a choice to be made. The Person acted. If it was anyone else, the act would be empty.

“Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation“. — Aristotle, The Poetics

Susan Boyle’s performance and the response of the Western world to it would make an interesting case study on the presence of the Form-Matter religion in our society. The first response from the audience was scorn, for her unrefined looks and coarse manner. However, once she opened her mouth, and the beautiful song came forth, she was praised, if not patronized, as a kind of anomaly. What if she had sang badly? Her value would have been judged based in the same religious pole of Form that motivated the scorn, and she would have been laughed off the stage. She would have been sent packing, back to a life of obscurity and loneliness.

But, people wept, and I too found myself crying, perhaps out of a love for the underdog. The judges stumbled over one another to offer her praise. She poked a stick in the eye of the beautiful people: “Good for you lassie!”. We are so accustomed to a complete aesthetic package, that the contrast was refreshing. There may be something to this. But, I have to ask myself the question: Is it, rather, the μοῖρα of my own perspective that calls forth this delight? Am I as patronizing and flippant as the audience there that night? Their response went from hatred to delight in a moment, because she had some Form to offer. If she had not, the outcome is easy to guess. 

Why is it so hard to believe that a physically unattractive and socially unrefined woman could sing so beautifully? Perhaps society expects total uniformity, based in the Form religion, and so we cannot grasp the possibility of two aspects existing side by side in harmony in one person: the unattractive and the beautiful. The presence of it is shocking and tilts our religious outlook on the world. It really shouldn’t. Looking at it from the other side, how many tight-bodied starlets are in fact vacuous leeches with little or nothing of beauty to offer beyond their flesh? The numbers would most likely astound us. But we are more forgiving and allow them to stay because our first impression is to accept the visual Form. And so, we overlook the value of the mass of society that cannot offer us eye-candy, and we would have overlooked Susan Boyle as well if not for her ear-candy. Perhaps it is right to assume that we in the West are simply back at the religion of the Greeks: people have value only in so far as they have beauty of the physical and aesthetic kind. Form is the basic motive that drives our social values, and the value we give to one another. But, in the words of Francis Schaeffer, in Christ “there are no little people”.

Notes on the Matter-Form Ground Motive (from Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture)

1. The Matter-Form ground motive is historically in alliance with the Roman Imperium (p. 15).

2. The Matter-Form ground motive is prior to, yet continues to operate in both Roman Catholicism and modern Humanism (p. 16). 

3. The central idea of the Matter religion is the deification of a formless, cyclical stream of life (Dionysian). According to Frederick Copleston, the cyclical notion of time cannot be found in Aristotle. Copleston is an Aristotelean expert, so I take him at his word. However, it was Aristotle who first employed the Matter-Form construction. He possessed a more refined notion of matter (is that an oxymoron?), but nonetheless, it was still based in a purely biotic aspect of reality. Matter can be defined as blind, incalculable fate, with no traceable, rational order. Decay and change, or alteration, are central notions as well. 

4. The central idea of the Form religion is cultural order, based in harmony, form & measure. The emphasis is upon aesthetic and formative power. This was the official religion of the polis (p. 17). Design and technological aspects of experience are elevated to the central motive of life and society (Apollonian). Beauty, form, health, design and cultural refinement are some of the notions inherent in this religion. Vitality and life are esteemed as values. Death is viewed in a superficial way. 

5. The dialectic between these two aspects is relative in the temporal plane. They are not at absolute odds, and instead are relative to one another. But raised to the level of religious absolutes, as they are in the Matter-Form ground motive, they become antithetical. “With intrinsic necessity, the ground motive of the culture religion called forth its counterpart” (p. 18). They are mutually supportive and correlative under the C-F-R ground motive.

6. The inner tension and “puzzle” of the dialectic that exists between these two poles was called μοῖρα by the Greeks. This morphed into the notion of the three Fates. Man in the midst of this tension, and subject to μοῖρα is the basis for much of the Classic Hellenic literature and philosophical speculations. 

My question: Where are we today? Are we just a massive conglomeration of all preceding Ground-Motives, every one vying for dominance, pushing us this way and that? Is pluralism just the Freedom pole of the Nature-Freedom ground motive, or is it an expression of every preceding ground motive seeking for the absolute centrality? Or, something else altogether?  

Propositions on the Religious Ground Motives

1. All public expressions of society (family, church, state, business, etc.) depend upon spiritually dominant (religious ground motives) cultural powers (formative energy).

2. Four religious ground motives have clashed in Western history.

3. Three of these ground motives are internally dualistic. Their discord pushes one’s posture of life to opposite extremes. They contain antithetical absolutes, created out of aspects of temporal experience. 

4. The religious ground motive exists as an antithesis without the possibility of dialectical synthesis. 

5. The correlative aspects of reality are logically mutually exclusive, yet are subject to theoretical dialectic. 

6. The Biblical ground motive is not a doctrine, nor can it be theologically elaborated. It is the central impulse of the human ego in Christ. 

7. The religious dialectic arises when a religious ground motive deifies and so absolutizes, ipso facto, part of created reality (an aspect of our temporal experience). 

8. The religious ground motive based upon an aspect of the temporal order always calls forth the correlative or counterpart of that aspect (i.e. Form/Matter [cultural power; material world, biotic functions]). How are these correlative, as particular counterparts? Why does Matter imply Form? 

9. There is an antithesis between the Creator and the creature.

10. There is an antithesis between the each of the four religious ground motives. Likewise, there is an antithesis between the inner, absolutized poles of the apostate ground motives. 

11. The coherence of temporal reality is found in the heart of man (Roots, 29-32). Apostate man (man in Adam) seeks coherence beginning with temporal reality (being). Man in Christ, seeks coherence in the religious ground motive of the Word-Revelation of the Triune God (meaning). 

12. The religious ground motive is the central impulse of the human heart. It determines the answers, in fact is the answer, to the three basic questions of life: “what is absolute?”; “where does thought begin?”; and, “who am I?” 

The Antithesis

This is the rudimentary stuff of Christian philosophy, and I would hope it would be the rudimentary stuff of Christian ministers. I listen to so many sermons that are simply mixed bags of Hellenic and Roman Catholic thinking, over and against the epistemology of Scripture. The new interest in Calvin has done little to undermine this, but give it fifteen years and there might be some change, at least one would hope. The party at Proclamation Trust excluded, of course. As an aside: Every time I listen to Dick Lucas, I am reminded of what preaching can and should be. Hearing him clarify Romans 1:18-32 is like a drink of cold water in the Outback. Even Reformed folk continue to argue for Natural Law, and make Paul a Thomist, or even an Aristotelean. This is a source of constant personal confusion and social tension within the church. Mr. Lucas lays this perennial error to rest. Onward…

Antithesis is one of those ugly (not euphonic in my opinion) but necessary terms. It’s basic meaning is “opposition” as Dooyeweerd points out. I am using it in the philosophical sense as a complete and total opposition of one premise to another. The old law of non-contradiction: A is not B and vice versa. They may be related to one another, but they are not one another. 

Having said that, there are two kinds of antithesis: Theoretical and Religious. 

In regards to the first, ever since Hegel, it has been assumed that the method of dialectical thought creates a shared platform between two contradictory notions, that two opposed assumptions are somehow malleable into a new singular entity. Every thought is a plastic one that can be easily joined to any other, regardless of their apparent contradiction. This is in fact true in the realm of the theoretical antithesis. The reason for this is that there is a higher absolute that exists behind them. 

Dooyeweerd offers the example of the Hellenic attempt to reconcile motion and rest. These are “logically determined opposites” (Roots, 7). Plato attempted to reconcile the two at the higher level of “being”, that both, “with equal right, are”. This is simply the recognition that logically opposite things exist together in reality. Motion and rest, although opposites are actually correlatives of one another; they exist as mutually supportive. They imply one another although they are mutually exclusive. The dialectic here resolves the contrast that exists between two relative things; they are not in an absolute dichotomy to one another. The synthesis of such relative concepts is a legitimate use of the dialectic method. As Dooyeweerd points out: “When used correctly, the method illustrates that nothing in temporal life is absolute”. (Hence, the wonders of jazz!). 

On the other hand, the Religious antithesis is an absolute. “This antithesis pertains to the relation between the creature and his creator, and thus touches the religious root of all temporal life” (Roots, 8). The term “religious” can be misleading, given the modern understanding of it and its identity with church or personal piety. But the idea that Dooyeweerd intends is this: “…a spiritual force that acts as the absolutely central mainspring of human society. …It is a communal motive… It establishes community” (ibid, 9). It is the very deepest absolute of our personal and corporate existence. 

“The absolute has a right to exist in religion only. Accordingly, a truly religious starting point either claims absoluteness or abolishes itself. It is never merely theoretical, for theory is always relative. The religious starting point penetrates behind theory to the sure, absolute ground of all temporal, and therefore relative, existence. Likewise, the antithesis it poses is absolute” (Roots, 8). 

According to Dooyeweerd there are four that have dominated at various points in history: Matter-Form (Hellenic), Nature-Grace (Roman Catholic), Nature-Freedom (Modern Humanist) and the Creation-Fall-Redemption (Biblical) religious ground motives. Of the four, the first three are “internally dualistic and fragmentary” (Roots, 11). Only the fourth is non-dualistic and inclusive. These four religious ground motives are mutually exclusive as well as absolute. There is no possibility of a synthesis between any two of the four.

Some final thoughts.

The value of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

1. A recognition of the sensual mediation of life. Even reading is a sensate action. Everything is mediated to us through the five senses.

2. The place of ostensive definition in the development of understanding (sensate aspect), in relation to the linguistic aspect of experience. Aristotle recognizes the place of prior knowledge in the learning process, however, the limiting nature of his theory of knowledge would exclude a linguistic a priori meaning.

3. The recognition that the religious absolute, or First Cause, is the determiner of everything. To know this is to know. This is the first problem of philosophy: what is absolute?

Aristotle’s answers to the three problems of philosophy:

1. “What is absolute?” Matter-Substance-Being, in our temporal plane of existence. It is true that Being precedes Meaning in regards to the relationship between the Creator and the creature. The Triune God is a being that determines all meaning. However, He lives outside of space and time, and is not subject to them. Therefore in our temporal sphere of existence, the Triune God mediates His authority to us through revelation. Aristotle puts Being first in the temporal sphere. What he has done is absolutize one of the legitimate modal aspects of our experience. In this case it is the biotic aspect (the Hellenic Dionysian pole). Likewise, he has asserted that Form is subject to it. This is a subordination of the cultural or formative aspect of classical Greek society (the Apollonian pole). Man is matter and form, but he is also subject to matter in regards to all of life. Everything is determined by matter. The dualism created by the elevation of one pole over the other cannot be maintained, for they are set up as antithetical to one another. The relative has been made the absolute.

2. “Where does thought begin?” Thought begins with Matter, and has an affective pressure on the five senses. We begin with individual things, and proceed from them to universals. There are elements of truth to this, however, this is the extent of Aristotle’s epistemology, and it cannot explain the origin and nature of language, nor give any real meaning to the world in which we find ourselves. He realizes that we must assume meaning in propositions, and explains as much with the law of non-contradiction. But, he cannot, via this method, get at what he hopes. Aristotle must assume a concrete meaning exists, prior to even discovering the meaning itself. There is no rational justification for this assumption in his system. Why should meaning exist? There can be no reasonable reply.

3. “Who am I?” I am simply matter and form. But these two elements exist as polar opposites, warring with one another for dominance. If one is asserted as the dominant pole, the other will be eclipsed or destroyed. If I am purely matter, then I am of no inherent value, save what I might be able to perform or act out, if I am free. If I am not free, I am free to be used and abused by others as a useful piece of matter until such time I am no longer useful; i.e. old age, decrepitude, mental illness, etc. As matter, I may be used for whatever purpose others more powerful than me deem fit; i.e. tissue for medical purposes, organs, food, etc. I will whistle in the dark in the hope that a normative ethic can be derived from Being.

Book XII

§7 “Life is the actuality of the mind, and god is that actuality, and his independent actuality is the best life and eternal life”. 

“God is an eternal and most excellent living being, so that continuous and eternal life belong to him. For that is what god is”. 

Concerning god: “If it is thinking of nothing, what is there that is noble in this? It will be like someone who is asleep. If it is thinking, but there is something else that determines its thinking, its substance will not be thought but a potency for thought, and it will no longer be the best substance, since its value belongs to it by virtue of its thinking”. 

God is “thinking upon thinking”. God is “mind” (νοῦς). 

“The mind and its object are not different in the case of things that have no matter, they will be the same, and thought will be one with the object of thought”. 

First thoughts: Aristotle has said repeatedly up to this point that matter, substance, essence, being and truth are really the same thing. And, things without matter are non-being, they do not exist. He is now suggesting that god is pure mind, and has no substance. The immediate conclusion is that, there is no god (which was Heidegger’s reading). However, he seems to be putting god into the category of pure form, as self-referential thinking. I am not certain of this, but otherwise we are left with an irresolvable paradox. But then again, perhaps this is the case. Aristotle has created a philosophy that might very well be at war with itself. It is a futility. 

If nothing else we are left with a god that is:
1. Indifferent to anything but himself.
2. Uninvolved in anything but himself.
3. Ignorant of anything but himself.
4. Distinguished as thought.

The notion that mind is non-matter, and thus one with god will be later adopted by Siger of Brabant (1235-1282), called the Oneness of the Intellect doctrine. He was accused of being a “heterodox Aristotelean”, but it seems to me that he was spot on. He was simply following Aristotle to the logical conclusion. 

Eckhart (1262-1328), another Medieval scholastic, went so far as to say that God does not exist, because God is pure intellect, which has no place in time. Again, he was simply being consistent with Aristotelean thought. 

Rather than ending with the Blessed Trinity, Aristotle ends with a non-god, wholly removed from the world of men. This is where all Aristotelean imagining ends when it is truly honest and consistent. Forcing Aristotle backwards, from temporal Being to the Triune God is an impossibility. We can only end where he did if we follow the same track of thinking. Autonomous thought is a ratio abumbrata. 

“Substance is primary; it is primary in definition, primary in knowledge, and primary in time”. — Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book VII, §1

The debate over the meaning of Genesis chapter one still rages. Much of the debate has been focused on exegetical and Creationist v. Evolutionist concerns. I am of the view that these are conclusive in and of themselves, and find myself in the 24-hour, six day creation camp, as unpopular as it is. I came to these conclusions apart from the following considerations. 

I would like to take a look at the issue from another angle, and that is the defense of the meaning of time preceding the Sun. The absence of the sun is often asserted as ipso facto the absence of time. This is a popular defense of the non-24 hour perspective, held by such celebrity ministers as Timothy Keller of Manhattan, NY. I am not sure of Mr. Keller’s actual views, but he is very clear about what they are not, and why. He lists the Sun issue as one of the rubs for him. This is the basis for the extension of the “days” into inexpressible measurements of, well, time.

What is implied in this view is, however, a whole metaphysic in regards to matter and its relation to time. This would involve a hierarchy of Being in which physical entities precede measured time, and dictate its existence. In other words, time is subject to things; things arrange and make time what it is. 

What does this imply? Time becomes meaningless. In the Genesis account “day”, enveloped by “evening” and “morning”, constitutes the kernel meaning of time. It is a definite measure determined prior to the creation of the Sun, spoken by God. No one disputes this. But, when the Sun is made the dictator of time, there is no longer any measure, and therefore no longer time. While trying to determine time, as post-Sol, men like Keller end up actually destroying it. Time becomes whatever the things dictate. In fact, following upon the creation of the Sun the same metaphysic applies in the view of Keller: there is no regulated structure of time. “Day” is meaningless. Beyond exegetical debates, what has occurred is a switch in metaphysics, in the nature of reality. 

The structure of reality has become hierarchic, with matter as the determiner of what is real. Being now precedes meaning in the order of things. If this is the exegetical conclusions of Mr. Keller and others, they need to face up to the philosophical implications of what they are suggesting. If God has thus spoken, or rather not spoken, then time is meaningless, and it will follow, that we too are meaningless. Maintaining that one aspect of creation is dictated by creation itself will eventually bleed into all aspects of creation. Meaning is given by God, but in Mr. Keller’s world, created things dictate meaning in the temporal order of things. A prior meaning is denied, and so meaning is left open as subject to pressure from other things. Perhaps Mr. Keller does not intend this, but the philosophical implication is ultimately Nihilism. This may seem a long way off, but it is now on the horizon as the inevitability. 

According to the classic 24-hour, six day creation view, time and space are equally ultimate. “In the beginning” starts the clock, measured by God’s determination of time. God gives meaning to all things, apart from their existence. As Paul writes, “he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world”. Meaning precedes being. All else is Nihilism.