Reformational Social Philosophy

by Lambert Zuidervaart

This post is part of an ongoing symposium interacting with Lambert Zuidervaart's book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy. For more responses to the book, see our table of contents.

Jonathan Chaplin is the world’s top expert on Herman Dooyeweerd’s social philosophy. He is also a former colleague at the Institute for Christian Studies and a leading social theorist in the reformational tradition. To have him comment on not just one but two of the chapters in Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation is both an honor and a stimulus to further reflection. Consequently I devote this entire post to his astute readings of chapters 12 and 13.

Public Justice and Prophetic Religion

Jonathan Chaplin’s commentary on the essay “Religion in Public” (chapter 12) raises two sets of illuminating questions, the first about the relation between religion and the state, and the second about religion and the public sphere. His questions about the religion/state relation have to do with the kind of authority religious spokespersons can legitimately claim when they address the state in public. Chaplin asks how religion’s political utopian dimension should be publicly expressed, and whether such expression would be anything more than a critique of the state’s current operations.

For me, this utopian dimension amounts to a future-oriented vision of society as a whole. Certainly it has a direct bearing on religiously motivated critiques of current state operations, but it goes beyond such critiques. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 is a good example. Calling for constitutionally anchored and legislatively secured civil rights for all African Americans, Dr. King envisions a day of freedom, justice, and reconciliation that goes far beyond what can be accomplished by the state, thereby providing a larger rationale and deeper motivation for the civil rights struggle.

Clearly, to utter a clarion call in public, as Dr. King did, religious spokespersons need to have firm personal convictions and the strong support of their religious communities. Yet I do not think such prophetic utterances to the state need to claim absolute truth or dogmatic certainty, nor should they. One reason for this, as Chaplin rightly indicates, is that, like all other claims made in public, these are fallible claims made by fallible human beings. At the same time, however, because religious claims finally have to do with what ultimately sustains us, their scope can make them seem absolute in a very specific sense: they seem to relativize every human attempt to provide sustenance, including those tied to the state and its operations. But this scope is, if you will, a negative absolute: a continual reminder that what the state provides is not enough, and it will never be enough.

But this scope is, if you will, a negative absolute: a continual reminder that what the state provides is not enough, and it will never be enough.

I do not think this dynamic between religion and political institutions is limited to modern religions. One can find it in the Jewish prophetic literature, which chapter 12 mentions, as well as in medieval and Reformation Christianity, as Chaplin points out. Nevertheless, I do think the development of the modern state, especially the modern constitutional democratic state, together with the concomitant pluralization and institutional specification of religion, has given contemporary religions “a new degree” of “critical freedom” toward the state (243). This is a new degree, not a new quality: certain degrees of critical freedom pre-exist modernity. Unfortunately, contemporary religious communities often ignore or squander this new degree of critical freedom, and it readily degenerates into either indifference or abuse.

Deep Gratitude

by Lambert Zuidervaart

This post is part of an ongoing symposium interacting with Lambert Zuidervaart's book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy. For more responses to the book, see our table of contents.

Deep gratitude. That phrase summarizes my response to the thoughtful and thought-provoking posts on Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation that Ground Motive has published over the past few months. It also captures my feelings about having this book appear when it did. Although the book collects essays that span more than three decades, it especially expresses the intellectual passions and concerns that have sustained my graduate teaching and scholarship in Toronto since 2002. I will officially retire from my faculty positions at the Institute for Christian Studies and the University of Toronto at the end of June. To have this book appear in April, and be addressed so carefully and lovingly by my (former) students and colleagues, makes me deeply grateful. Thank you, one and all.

I have organized my responses in four posts. The first, titled “Reformational Social Philosophy,” addresses Jonathan Chaplin’s extraordinarily insightful and provocative posts on chapters 12 and 13. Chaplin has put so many central social-philosophical issues on the table that, at a minimum, his posts deserve a post-length response. My second post—“Toward a New Politics”—takes up the primarily political questions raised by Clinton Stockwell, Ruthanne Crapo, Ben Fulman, Michael DeMoor, and Farshid Baghai on Chapters 11, 12, 13, 15, and the Epilogue, respectively.

After these two posts focused on the book’s Part Three (Social Transformation), the third post, titled “Philosophy Art, and Religion,” turns to the essays on second-generation reformational philosophy in Part Two (Reforming Reason). It responds to the contributions by Ronald Kuipers, Adrian Atanesescu, Hendrik Hart, and Ben Hampshire on chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9, respectively, as well as to Robert Sweetman’s commentary on chapter 2. The fourth and final post, titled “Dooyeweerd, Truth, and the Reformational Tradition,” takes up the remaining contributions. Ranging over the book’s introduction, chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5 in Part One (Critical Retrieval), chapter 10 in Part Two, chapter 14 in Part Three, and the Epilogue (again), it interacts with the posts by Neal DeRoo, Peter Lok, Jazz Feyer Salo, Josh Harris, Dan Rudisill, Tricia Van Dyk, Allyson Carr, and Doug Blomberg.

My responses primarily focus on questions and issues that the post writers explicitly raise. Because some contributions do more of that than others do, some receive more extensive responses. I have thought about every post, however, and have found each one illuminating and helpful. Writing these responses has provided an opportunity to clarify, modify, deepen, and reconsider the ideas I have presented in Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation. I wish to thank everyone who contributed to this online experiment in communal scholarship.

Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and Professor of Philosophy, status only, at the University of Toronto. He and his wife Joyce Recker live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at Calvin College. Recognized as a leading Adorno scholar, and widely published in aesthetics and social philosophy, he is currently developing a comprehensive and transformative conception of truth. His other interests include singing, hiking, and hanging out with friends and his Golden Retriever Hannah Estelle. In 2010 he published the literary memoir Dog-Kissed Tears: Songs of Friendship, Loss, and Healing (Wipf and Stock, Resource Publications). More information about his scholarship and teaching is at his faculty web page.

Critical Retrieval in Community

by Allyson Carr

This post is part of an ongoing symposium interacting with Lambert Zuidervaart's book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy. For more responses to the book, see our table of contents.

In many ways, the essay “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth” both exemplifies and questions what is at the heart of this collection: the Reformational tradition.

The essay begins narratively, with Zuidervaart recounting how, at a March 2005 book symposium and again a bit later in a Philosophia Reformata review, the question was raised regarding the relationship of his project on truth to “the main lines of reformational ontology.” He details as well that some of the same important reformational thinkers who raised that question also wondered whether Artistic Truth, which had just come out, and which contains what Zuidervaart called his preliminary sketch of a wider project on truth, “lacks the depth of criticism and structural insight that comes with the reformational project of transcendental critique” (277, both citations). This particular essay, then, is both a demonstration and an apologetics. It is meant to do two things: to make explicit the reformational ground and roots enabling Zuidervaart’s theory of truth to grow, and also to be an argument addressed to the reformational community for inclusion. It seeks to elucidate the case that Zuidervaart’s wider project is reformational, contributes to reformational resources, and seeks to critically but lovingly develop the reformational project.

In addition to these two aims, the essay also gives an excellent and succinct explanation of Zuidervaart’s unfolding theory of truth, and so it is to that theory we will first turn. Zuidervaart tells us, “I propose to think of truth in its most comprehensive sense as a dynamic correlation between (1) human fidelity to societal principles and (2) a life-giving disclosure of society” (281). In this, Zuidervaart notes that his work on truth is similar to reformational scholar Herman Dooyeweerd insofar as it is not a static structure, but that he departs from Dooyweerd’s conception because Dooyeweerd understood truth as a proper relationship, religious in character, that is supra-temporal. Zuidervaart regards truth as a historical process, however, which is a significant difference from his reformational forebearer, Dooyeweerd.

At this point, Zuidervaart fills in what he means by a phrase like “societal principles.” These are those things (such as solidarity, justice, and resourcefulness, he notes) that are “commonly held and holding,” but they too are historical in nature; that is, Zuidervaart characterizes them as “historical horizons that people learn, achieve, contest, reformulate, and ignore in the midst of social struggle” (283). Zuidervaart notes that this characterization also differs somewhat from Dooyeweerd. He is drawing on Dooyeweerd’s conception of the “law side” of the modal aspects, but does not separate that law side from the subject side, as Dooyeweerd did--this means that Zuidervaart’s “ontology of principles” differs from Dooyeweerd's understanding of the law side, leading to an even bigger difference, which Zuidervaart lays out for his readers: “An ‘ontology of principles’ is an account of the status and meaning of the conditions that obtain for normative practices and institutions. ‘Normative practices and institutions’ are ones that can be better or worse for human flourishing and can be experienced as better or worse for human flourishing. Many reformational philosophers, like Dooyeweerd, wish to anchor such conditions in God’s creational ordinances. By contrast, I describe such conditions as ‘societal principles’ and call attention to their historical embeddedness, their eschatological openness, and their vocational character” (283.)

All this entails that Zuidervaart revises the cosmonomic notion of norm in three important ways: 1) societal principles are “not in effect prior to their formation by humans”; 2) societal principles are “not simply given or fixed” at some origin, but “emerge” and “could change” and 3) societal principles “manifest God’s instruction and invitation and guidance, God’s call to love” (283, all three citations). These principles then are not static, not set (but ever-changing) and are responsive--both to human needs/circumstances and to God’s call, centered on God’s call to love.

Zuidervaart regards truth as a historical process, however, which is a significant difference from his reformational forebearer, Dooyeweerd.

Responding Wisely to Earth’s Lament

by Doug Blomberg

This post is part of an ongoing symposium interacting with Lambert Zuidervaart's book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy. For more responses to the book, see our table of contents.

I was privileged to be present when Dr. Zuidervaart delivered his Inaugural Address at Knox College Chapel in 2004. As he says, it was designed to be readily accessible to a broad audience, as indeed it was. He noted that his mother (very alert indeed, despite her advancing years) was in attendance, and he hoped and expected his presentation to be intelligible to her. It is a great challenge to philosophers to descend from the heights, but Lambert achieved this admirably, notwithstanding the opening simile, in which he compared himself to a trapeze artist (though thankfully still preferring his academic “costume”).

Key to what Lambert said was the imperative that the suffering experienced by all in God’s creation – non-human as well as human creatures – was a reality to be addressed forthrightly in philosophy, but in recent centuries rarely has been. As a community acknowledging its embeddedness in the Creation/Fall/Redemption ethos (or “ground motive”, as befits the present context), the suffering inherent in living in a fallen world must be a prime topic for reformational philosophers (and not only them). And of course, it must be similarly so with respect to the reality of redemption.

Lambert’s address was not only accessible, but brief, the latter certainly aiding the former; hopefully, my post will be likewise. When I presented my Inaugural Address a year ago, the theme of bringing healing to the world – through philosophy and myriad other ways – was prominent; I mention this not to celebrate my “shining moment”, but to honour Lambert’s significant contribution to my thinking in this respect (and much else besides). Indeed, when he congratulated me on my speech, I thanked him both for this and for the debt I owed him. It is a debt owed also by ICS.

The heart of Lambert, philosopher, is rooted in the Scriptures, not (so Evan Runner pithily put it) as a light into which we stare but as a light illuming the paths we walk. He is explicit about whence his direction comes. I have sometimes wondered why the account of the Fall comes so quickly upon the heels of the wondrous story of creation in Genesis. We should not be dismayed, eternally disappointed as we are. Suffering has pervaded the Earth since almost the beginning of humankind. Nonetheless, the hope of redemption quickly unfolds, the clothing and banishing of Adam and Eve being for their salvation, as indeed was the mark God placed upon Cain to protect him, the Ark that rescued our ancestors from the waters, and the Tower destroyed so that people would disperse to care for the world entrusted to them.

The heart of Lambert, philosopher, is rooted in the Scriptures, not (so Evan Runner pithily put it) as a light into which we stare but as a light illuming the paths we walk.

Lambert implores us to let suffering speak. I cannot ignore the resonance with Parker Palmer’s autobiographical account, Let Your Life Speak. Palmer freely acknowledges the deep depression he has often suffered and implores readers to live their lives from the ground up, rather than the head down (which he sees as all too common). This is not at all to disparage thinking carefully about how we mind our lives, but to confess that who we are bodily, in the fullness of our humanness, is the gift God has given us to live out, the riches he has bestowed on us as bearers of his image, sufficient enough to the task for which he created us, however daunting, painful, grievous the wounds we gather along the way. How can we speak truly, without speaking the truth of suffering? As the Hebrew nephesh connotes, we are ever “needy” and vulnerable, not in any way self-subsistent “souls”, as the Greek psyche suggests in its philosophical garb.

A Hope Without a More Primary Hopelessness?

by Farshid Baghai

This post is part of an ongoing symposium interacting with Lambert Zuidervaart's book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy. For more responses to the book, see our table of contents.

Let me start with a confession: I know almost nothing about the tradition of reformational philosophy. Hence, this brief note is more a way of learning my first lessons about this tradition than an informed engagement with the epilogue of Lambert Zuidervaart’s book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformations: Essays in Reformational Philosophy.

The epilogue of Zuidervaart’s book – “Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom” – is indeed a prologue. Not simply because it is an inaugural address. The epilogue is primarily concerned with sketching the key elements of a philosophy that hopes and strives for a different future, i.e., a new Earth. The epilogue reflects on the virtual absence of traces of human and non-human suffering in the history of philosophy and highlights the implications of this absence for philosophy today. It asks why and how philosophy suffers from an indifference toward or conscious suppression of human and non-human suffering. In response to this indifference or suppression, the epilogue offers a sketch of a transformative philosophy—a philosophy that is responsive to suffering and aims at “global healing” (p. 323) in a transformed world.

Zuidervaart’s insights into the state of contemporary philosophy and his redemptive suggestions are of particular significance for our time. They highlight the need for and contribute to the development and elaboration a kind of philosophical thinking that steps into the distress of human existence today. That is why we should take these insights and suggestions seriously and think through them one by one.

In this brief note, I would like to focus on and then raise two sets of questions about one of the central ideas at work in the epilogue: patient hope. One cannot overstate the significance of this idea for Zuidervaart’s conception of transformative philosophy: “Western philosophy has largely lost its speculative moment” and “does not think out of hope…” (p. 319). Thus, “patient hope for a new Earth” (p. 318) is indispensable for a philosophy that is to meet its contemporary challenges. I engage with the idea of patient hope particularly in terms of its relationship to “the promise of God’s future” (p. 318).

In this brief note, I would like to focus on and then raise two sets of questions about one of the central ideas at work in the epilogue: patient hope.