Seven: Mid-Twentieth Century Afrikaner Thought
The first major thinker I would like to deal with here, is Professor Frederik Potgieter. I was privileged to study under him for my first Doctor's Degree.
Professor Potgieter was born in the Eastern Cape. He studied successively at the University of Cape Town and the University of Stellenbosch, receiving his Doctorate of Philosophy for a dissertation on Pavlovian Psychology (i.e. how to make a dog drool).
Potgieter next did his Doctorate in Theology under Professor Valentine Hepp -- the successor to Kuyper at the Free University of Amsterdam. There, Potgieter submitted a very important dissertation on The Relationship Between Philosophy and Theology in the Thought of John Calvin. He ploughed through all sixty-some volumes of Calvin in the original Latin to do this. Consequently, this particular work of his is an absolute goldmine of valuable quotations.
Incidentally, my own little book of some fifty pages, Calvin on the Sciences, is a further distillation of this. For I derived the Calvin quotes on the subject of Philosophy, Theology and the Special Sciences there -- largely from Potgieter's book.
Potgieter has also authored many other writings. There is his excellent book on predestination and the ordo salutis; a fine study on pantheism, which he well refutes; and several books on occult phenomena (including the ability to see into the future) in which he attempts to explain them from a Christian viewpoint.
His general explanation is that Adam, before the fall, had extraordinary powers of perception -- which he lost at the time of the fall. Yet in certain of the children of Adam today, by virtue of God's common grace, there are sometimes strong sporadic "after-glows" (as Potgieter calls them) of this original ability that God gave to Adam.
According to predestination, some people have these abilities more than others. These God given abilities are then either consciously or unconsciously taken hold of by Satan or his demons, and then misused to further the kingdom of darkness. On the other hand, says Potgieter, other individuals with similar special gifts consecrate them to the Lord Jesus Christ. In that way, they are enabled to perform unusual services in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Potgieter has also written a very interesting book in English on Christ and Israel -- a book on eschatology. But I think his most important writing is a work called The Theocentric University. There he distinguishes the concrete jungles of humanist institutions from the God-centred university. The latter glorifies God, and recognises God alone as the true Ground and Centre of any university, for the teaching of every subject in every faculty. Thus the Theocentric (or rather the Trinicentric) University is distinguished from the Romish or the atheistic and the humanistic and the Islamic university (as the case may be).
Potgieter was extremely upset when the South African Government, after a lot of study and consideration, decided some fifteen or so years ago to go ahead and to establish Chairs of Hindu and Islamic Theology at some South African universities for the benefit of the considerable numbers of Hindus and Moslems living in South Africa.
Potgieter felt this was contrary to the South African Constitution, which claims to be specifically Christian. On the other hand, one needs to recognise the problems of a Government trying to operate in a country where only a minority of its total subjects are Christians (even though a vast majority of the White citizens are professedly Christian).
Potgieter is also an expert on Calvin. Just before I came here to give these lectures, I learned he is producing another book to be entitled Calvin for Today. It is a system of daily readings for each day of the year.
The blurb is very interesting. It says: "Order your Biblical Daily Reading Book now for the New Year! Make Calvin part of your life by acquiring this book of daily readings, a work in which the great Reformed Church Father speaks to us in living Afrikaans, translated from the original Latin and compiled by one of the foremost authorities on Calvin, Professor F.J.M. Potgieter, Professor Emeritus of Stellenbosch. These 365 daily readings are a choiceselection of Calvin's written inheritances which, for the most part, are taken from his various writings. They cover a large variety of subjects, e.g. predestination, infant baptism, prayer, our Christian clothing, the right of resistance, and God's providence."
One of the interesting things about Potgieter, is a discussion concerning his Doctoral Dissertation on the relationship between theology and philosophy in the thought of John Calvin -- which was undertaken by Cornelius Van Til in 1940. Van Til said: "Potgieter argues that according to Dooyeweerd not revelation but the regenerated heart is posited as the foundation of Philosophy." However, Potgieter replied that the fixed foundation of special revelation in the Word of God may never be exchanged for the instability and fallibility of the still-sinful regenerated heart or regenerated ego.
To this criticism of Dooyeweerd by Potgieter, Van Til replied in 1940: "Potgieter contends that a complete and constant submission of the regenerated ego is nowhere found because no one is perfect. But surely such a submission does take place in principle, or there would be no more Christian theology any more than a Christian philosophy. Potgieter apparently desires that the Christian philosopher, instead of going directly to the Bible itself, should first come to a competent theological professor for a statement of what the Bible has to say to him."
Continues Van Til: "Are we then to understand that this is because this theology professor, Potgieter, is perfect in degree as well as in principle? If the author had observed the simple distinction between perfection in principle and perfection in degree, he could not have made the exceedingly serious charge of subjectivism against Dooyeweerd."
Now it is true Professor Potgieter does believe that the Christian Philosopher, in using the Bible at the theoretical scientific level, needs to consult with the Christian Theologian's expert scientific exegesis and systematisation of Scripture. That is true. I myself think Potgieter is right in that statement, and Van Til perhaps wrong. But Potgieter has never claimed that all Christians, even to understand the Bible at a common sense level, need to come to the Christian Theologian in order to get his clearance first. For Potgieter emphatically believes in the clarity and perspicuity of Scripture.
It is interesting that others have agreed with Potgieter against what Van Til said in agreement with Dooyeweerd back in 1940. Dooyeweerd, according to Van Til, then constantly subjected the regenerated ego to the Scriptures. To be sure, Dooyeweerd finds in the regenerated ego the immediate starting point and concentration point of philosophy. But, says Van Til, it is the great virtue of the cosmonomic "Philosophy of Law" that Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven insist in all their writing that man should regard himself as a creature and a sinner -- and should therefore go to the Scriptures in order, in the light of them, to search out the meaning of the created world.
One of the later "Potgieter" philosophers in South Africa, a lady called Anna Louise Conradie (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Natal) agrees with Potgieter. She says Van Til has just not seen the real danger pointed out by Dooyeweerd's critics. If theology is controlled by Dooyeweerd's "cosmonomic idea" -- a philosophical creature formulated by Dooyeweerd's philosophy from the religious a priori -- we are in fact making theology subject not to the objective norm of Scripture but to a subjective religious experience of Dooyeweerd's over which we have no control.
I think it is true to say that on this particular point Van Til has "seen the light" since 1940. Today he is very critical of what this subjectivistic point of departure in Dooyeweerd's epistemology has led to. On this particular point, Potgieter today stands vindicated over against Dooyeweerd (and even against the Van Til of 1940). For Van Til has distantiated himself, especially over the last twenty years, very sharply from Dooyeweerd on this point. Indeed, Van Til has come over more to the position of Potgieter (and Stoker).
Now Potgieter, amongst other things, is Chairman of the Christian Mission to the Jews Society of South Africa. In that capacity, he wrote a very interesting little book called Christ and Israel -- on eschatology. He says in this book: "In agreement with the principle laid down in Romans 11 verse 11, the conspicuous coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles (compare Romans 11:12-15) will rouse Israel to jealously. The reciprocity of the stimulating action of the fullness of the Gentiles and that of Israel, is evident. On the one hand, the acceptance by presumably many Gentiles -- leading to their fullness -- arouses jealousy in Israel. With the result that they turn to the Messiah. And on the other hand, the fullness of Israel means blessings untold for the Gentiles -- and culminates in life from the dead for them."
Yet I believe that perhaps the greatest living thinker in South Africa, a man now approaching his ninetieth birthday, is the great Hendrik Stoker. Prof. Dr. Stoker has had a long innings as one of the world's foremost philosophers. He started off at the University of Potchefstroom in the 1920s, teaching fifty hours a week. During the war years (WW II), Stoker strenuously protested South Africa's involvement. He favoured strict neutrality. As a result, General Smuts, then the Prime Minister of South Africa, jailed Stoker and put him in a concentration camp at a place called Koffiefontein.
In that concentration camp there were numbers of other "hard-nosed" Calvinists who had also expressed the desire for South Africa to remain neutral. They included a young lawyer called John Vorster -- who later became Prime Minister of South Africa. Later, at the end of the 1960's, as Prime Minister, he passed a law requiring all public education in South Africa from that time onwards to be clearly Christian in the teaching of ever subject. Clearly, Vorster was Stoker's most influential "graduate" from the makeshift "University of Koffiefontein." For Stoker, in the concentration camp, rounded up these young Calvinists and started what he likes to call the "University of Koffiefontein" -- in the concentration camp! He gave them their assignments, and taught them for a number of years. Then he issued pieces of paper that he had drawn up -- being honorary degrees, enabling them to boast that they had sat at his feet.
Now Hendrik Stoker of Potchefstroom is certainly a Christian philosopher every bit the equal of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd. The interesting thing is that both Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven consider Stoker to be their equal . Van Til has said recently -- just two months ago, when visiting me in my own home as my guest -- that Stoker is, in his opinion, the world's leading thoroughly Christian philosopher.
Stoker as a young man went to Germany and wrote a doctoral dissertation there under the great Max Scheler -- on the subject of Conscience ("Das Gewissen"). Although Stoker usually writes against a wealthy background of psychological experiences, he does tend to stress the cosmological and phenomenological aspects of philosophy and of reality rather more than he does the epistemological aspects (in the way the Amsterdam school does).
Now you will not find in any of Stoker's many writings a systematic presentation of philosophy in a set of volumes (such as in Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought). Stoker's thought rather consists of scores and scores of monographs -- nearly all of them written in Afrikaans, and most still untranslated. They cover a variety of subjects, the most important of which are perhaps his works on ontology.
Here we are thinking especially of his masterpiece The Philosophy of the Idea of creation -- and also of his work against evolution and on Calvinism and the Doctrine of the Law-Spheres. He has also given a rather critical evaluation of the "newer" philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam (the views of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd). Also his brochure Something About a Calvinistic Philosophy is well worth studying.
Moving out of the area of ontology into the area of epistemology, Stoker has written a whole host of works. I think his masterpiece in this field is his work The Necessity of Christian Scholarship. There he, in great detail, gives suggestions for a formal methodology to be used in the pursuit of all of the various sciences at a Christian university. It is a very valuable work, and we desperately need it translated into English. (By the way, the Philosophy Department of Dordt College here in the United States believes that this work should enjoy priority to be translated into English, to be a useful tool for English-speaking Christian academicians throughout the world.)
Other works Stoker has written on epistemology are The Problems of a General Gnosiology - and a work I myself have translated into English Something About Reasonableness and Rationalism. I have also translated his work, The Snail's Shell Theories of Consciousness. His Crisis in Modern Psychology is also an important work.
Stoker has written many methodological works. His Principles of a Christian Doctrine of Science and his Christianity and Science I have available in translation (but not yet published). His work Scriptural Faith and the Pursuit of Science I also translated (some twelve or thirteen years ago). Other works he wrote, were in the realm of causation theory -- Something About Causality. Then there are his works on moral philosophy: The Basis of Morality -- and his Theological, Philosophical and Special Scientific Ethics.
A very important work that we need to get translated into English, is Stoker's work that he wrote during World War II -- perhaps from the concentration camp. It is entitled: The Battle of the Orders. There, he contrasts Nazism, Communism, Socialism, Liberal Democracy and Calvinism -- saying that the Calvinistic position on statecraft, in rejecting the others, is the only viable position.
Just recently, in the last decade, some of his major writings have been collected in two volumes in the anthology Oorsprong en Rigting (alias Origin and Direction).
Now to Stoker, the idea of creation is far more encompassing than is the Amsterdam school's cosmonomic idea. Hence Stoker's so-called creationistic philosophy, or the philosophy of the idea of creation. Within the unity of God's creation, says Stoker, there are a variety of ontic differences of modalities, degrees, qualities, values and being. There are not just different law-spheres, as Dooyeweerd holds. Each of Stoker's different ontic realities not only possesses sovereignty in its own sphere (as also in Dooyeweerd) -- but also possesses universality in its own sphere.
In other words, you cannot say that each thing in the universe is sovereign in its own sphere - cut off from everything else. Each thing in the universe, in its own way, also reflects the whole universe within itself.
You can now see why Van Til thinks so highly of Stoker as a philosopher. Because in Stoker's philosophy, Van Til sees a beautiful outworking of the Van Tillian principle of the Ontological Trinity -- as reflected in creation. Furthermore, says Stoker, each ontic reality (or substance as he calls it) also possesses freedom in its own ability. That is to say, everything in the universe has its own peculiar nature -- by which it develops and expresses itself.
Everything in the universe further has universality in its own ability. That is to say, each substance affects and is affected by every other substance in the universe. In fact, this is the counterpart of the old physics, that said: "Be careful when you breathe; because when you breathe, you shake the stars on the other side of the universe." Of course, this is perfectly true. That is why it is so important that we keep God's Law and do the right thing. Because we disturb the equilibrium throughout the cosmos when we sin!
For these reasons, says Stoker, the cosmos consists not merely of fifteen Dooyeweerdian law-spheres -- the numerical sphere through the so-called pistic (as fifteen little globes strung together in cosmic time like beads on a necklace). No! The cosmos rather consists of various cones -- wedged together like slices of a Christmas cake cut apart from one another but not removed from one another. Or, Stoker says elsewhere -- like a bicycle wheel with God as the axle at the centre, and all of the spokes radiating out from God and connected with God and then also to the tyre (representing the outer rim of the universe).
Each cone of Stoker's "Christmas cake theory of the universe" supports all of the other cones or wedge-shaped slices of cake. One of these cones or wedges contains all of the law-spheres of Dooyeweerd. The other cones of the round cake contain different substances -- such as values, causation, and qualities. You need all of these cones or wedge-shaped pieces of the Christmas cake, says Stoker, in order to explain the entire universe. What is more, he adds, the individual created beings in the universe (which he calls "existences") also cut right across the entirety of these conical or wedge-shaped schemes. It is only in the divine createdness of the cosmos as a whole, and of each creature in the cosmos, that the ontic unity can be established.
Now Stoker has insisted that what Dooyeweerd regards as the modal sphere of history is in fact a distinct cone or wedge of the Christmas cake -- quite different from all of the Dooyeweerdian law-spheres. Stoker has also advocated a new motive -- for the understanding of existentialism today. Dooyeweerd only takes you up to Late Liberalism. He finds a tension, in Late Liberalism, between the "freedom motive" and the "science motive." But Stoker believes we need to go beyond that, in order to understand modern existential man -- modern man whom Rushdoony so beautifully invests with a "present-oriented low-class existentialistic mentality."
Stoker feels existential man is locked into a dichotomistic tension between contingency and meaning. Nothing has any meaning. Life has no meaning. But then -- purely contingently -- man feels hungry etc. "I'd better go eat some food -- and it has meaning! I eat food now -- but then, after that, why am I alive?" We all recognise this motive very much, in the times in which we live.
There is also another very strong difference between Stoker and Dooyeweerd. To Stoker, theology is not just the special science of the so-called pistic sphere, as Dooyeweerd believes. Still less is theology dependent upon the principles of the one and only general science of philosophy, as Dooyeweerd believes. To Stoker, theology is the general science which studies the Creator's Self-revelation in Scripture -- alongside the other general science of philosophy (which studies the creation revelation as a whole in nature) as well as alongside all of the special sciences (each of which studies a part of creation revelation). And all of these sciences -- philosophy, theology and the special sciences -- borrow from and lend to one another. More importantly, they must all do so in subjection to the teaching of the Word of God!
Finally, Stoker argues that the so-called pistic sphere of Dooyeweerd is not a peripheral window on eternity succeeding the moral sphere and the juridical spheres. The pistic sphere belongs to the very root of man, and influences all of his other actions. And further, says Stoker, the social sphere of Dooyeweerd is not limited to human beings. Because, points out Stoker, animals can behave socially too. One can therefore speak even of the social behaviour of spiders. Stoker would say so. Dooyeweerd would deny it. But the American Dr. Brach has proved it, in his Ph.D. dissertation on the social life of Black Widows!
Stoker has given the following scheme of the inter-relationship of the various sciences. First of all, theology. In theology, says Stoker -- following Jan Waterink -- there is a definite and necessarily irreversible chronological order in the Unfolding of the pursuit of the theological sciences.
First of all, the bibliological disciplines. These deal directly with the study of the Bible (such as canonics, exegesis and rules for Hermeneutical exposition and assemblement).
Second, there are the ecclesiological disciplines. As you study the Bible bibliologically, the Church forms impressions as to the meaning of the Bible. This leads to the rise of theological subjects such as church law and church history (whether general church history or national church history).
Third, on further theological reflection, the Church formulates its doctrines. Thus we reach the dogmatological disciplines (such as systematic theology, the history of doctrine, theological ethics, etc.).
Then finally, says Stoker, there are the practical alias the diaconalogical disciplines. These include poimenics (how to take care of the flock); diaconics (how to look after church property and poor people); and so forth.
To this, more recently, have been added the missiological disciplines. They deal with the way in which the Church is to expand into the "regions beyond" -- missionary agrics; missionary organics; missionary theory; missionary history; missionary technology; and so forth. So much then, for Stoker's encyclopaedic view of the theological sciences.
He then moves on to give his view of the sciences of the cosmos or the universe. These he says, are studied first by philosophy (the general science dealing with the whole picture telescopically) -- and second by each of the various special sciences (which particularly study items in the universe piecemeal and microscopically).
Under philosophy, the following disciplines are included, says Stoker. First of all, his Grundriss (or Foundation). Amongst other things, this embraces the doctrines of the Archimedes' point, the cosmic dimensions, ontology and general principia or points of departure.
He then goes on to deal with the doctrines of the law-spheres of the individuality structures of all created things, and their interrelationships with one another as well as their changing structures which they undergo as existences, embedded into time. For they move from the past through the present into the future. He also deals with axiology (or a system of evaluating the relative importance of all subjects in the universe).
He then moves on to his epistemology. How can man know that the thing he thinks he sees, really is there? Here Stoker sets forth his doctrine of science -- also his view on the limitations of science, and the value of pre-scientific immediate awareness (and his methodology).
Last, Stoker deals with the special philosophies of each of the various special sciences. Here he deals microscopically with the particular special sciences. Now the particular sciences are divided by Stoker -- into the cultural sciences, the anthropological sciences, the biological sciences, the physico-chemical sciences, and the mathematical sciences.
Each of these groups of sciences, says Stoker, are to be subdivided further into sciences and sub-sciences. The sub-sciences are further subdivided into theoretical sciences dealing with principles and values, empirical sciences dealing with facts, and applied sciences dealing with technology.
Throughout, says Stoker, the various sciences are at liberty to borrow from one another. They do so in accordance with his formulated philosophical principles of "universality in one's own sphere" and "sovereignty in one's own sphere" and "freedom in one's own ability" and "universality in one's own ability."
The particular special sciences are then further subdivided by Stoker as follows.
First of all, there are the sciences which study numbers and movement and space. Here, one encounters the theoretical sciences of theoretical mathematics and theoretical dynamics -- arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry.
Under the empirical sciences, under mathematics he classifies the science of mechanics. That is when you put mathematics to work to figure out how many revolutions a wheel will make if you roll it from here to the door of a building.
Then he deals with what he calls the physical-chemical sciences. Here, he would look first of all at theoretical nature study -- and then at the empirical or factual application of this -- at chemistry, at geology and at astronomy. Last under this head, he would look at the applied or technological sciences, here taking a look at surveying and the engineering sciences.
Stoker then goes on to deal with the sciences of the individual structures and their interrelationships. Here he has a measure of overlap between the biological sciences which follow next, and the anthropological sciences.
Under biological sciences he has theoretical biology. Then, in the study which follows of empirical biology, he distinguishes biochemistry and geography. He then moves on to botanical studies and those of development, genetics, animal psychology and other animal sciences (particularly histology, cytology, embryology and ecology). There we have the overlap with the human biological sciences, where he would study human empirical biological sciences such as physiology (studying the structure of the human body) and anatomy and morphology. Under the applied biological sciences, he has listed veterinary sciences, agricultural sciences and applied biology. As far as the application of the human biological sciences are concerned, he has of course the various medical sciences (or medical arts).
This then brings one over into the next large group of sciences distinguished by Stoker. Here we find the anthropological sciences, where he distinguishes theoretical ethnology (and its practical application in empirical ethnology), theoretical characterology and personalitology (applied in empirical, factual and historical characterology and personalitology), and theoretical psychology and its factual application in empirical psychology and its further technological application in applied psychology (including psychiatry). There is also theoretical anthropology factually applied in empirical and historical psychology (and technologically applied at the level of applied anthropology).
This then brings Stoker to another overlap. This time it is that between the anthropological group of sciences and the cultural group of sciences. Here on the margin of these two, he has theoretical education, its factual application in empirical and historical education, and its technological workings-out in applied education. So too, he has the theory of history and the empirical and factual history of mankind. Further: theoretical political science; its factual application in empirical and historical political science; and its technological outworkings in the applied political sciences.
Next follows theoretical sociology; its factual application in empirical and historical sociology, and its technological outworkings in applied sociology. Then, in his purely cultural groups of sciences -- he has logic and theoretical linguistics factually worked out in empirical and historical linguistics as well as in the history of the sciences. He also has theoretical economics factually worked out in empirical and historical economics, and technologically worked out further in applied economics.
Stoker then presents his critique of art -- theoretical art and aesthetics and art theory, factually worked out in empirical art and the history of art and in all the varieties and technological ramifications in applied art.
Next come theoretical jurisprudence -- factually worked out in empirical and historical jurisprudence, and technologically worked out in applied jurisprudence. Then follows theoretical ethics, worked out factually in empirical and historical ethics; and theoretical religious science as worked out factually in empirical and historical religious science. So much, then, for Stoker's arrangement of the various special sciences.
I believe this scheme of Stoker's that we have just run through -- his theological sciences scheme, his philosophical sciences scheme, and then his scheme of the various special sciences (and finally the interrelation between these three groups) to be extremely valuable. I myself see it as a reflection in man's scientific research of the Ontological Trinity. I think it is important not only because it clearly shows the interrelationship of all of the special sciences, but also because it emphasises the necessary interrelationship within each science -- of theoretical, historical, empirical and applied science.
Stoker was born in 1899 -- in Johannesburg. In preparing this series of lectures, I came across a personal letter written by the then seventy-two Stoker to me some nine years ago. It is dated 17th December 1971, and I would like to share it with you.
He says: "Dear friend and brother Dr. Lee. Concerning the receipt of Dr. Van Til's Festschrift, Jerusalem and Athens, I am completely in the dark. I only received the Festschrift, and further don't know anything. The matters that you have just informed me about regarding the way in which it is being received and the report that it will possibly be republished, does my heart good. But, as I say, up till today, I am still in glorious ignorance.
"As far as my article in the Festschrift concerning Dr. Van Til is concerned, I did my very best to do him justice. Unfortunately, he is a much misunderstood figure. Your translation of my article on Christian Scholarship, I still have here. I would like to improve it technically and terminologically, here and there. But let us indeed regard it as final and settled that you will publish the translation.
"As a matter of fact, you can do it without any strings attached from me. Just do allow me to write a short Preface to the English translation that you have made, to thank you -- and also to point out to the reader that since writing this work, I have come to further insights and developments...
"Until deep in January 1972, I will not be able to look through the corrected manuscript and send it back to you. Here, I am all bound up with two study items that I have to do for the Christian Educational Society of South Africa which they want to publish -- and another article on labour and reward for the South African Association of Christian Scholarship Bulletin; and a further critique of Professor Oberholzer's educational work; and also another article on contingency; and yet another work -- and all of these just terribly pressing!
"In any case, my hearty thanks to you for your part in the publication of my work on Christian Scholarship. I really do appreciate it. By the way, did you attend the Day of the Covenant celebrations yesterday in Natal, and did you enjoy it? Hearty Christmas and New Year's wishes are hereby extended from my wife and I, to your wife and yourself. With hearty greetings, totally yours, H.G. Stoker.
"P.S. Is your recently completed Doctor of Philosophy dissertation available yet? Who is publishing it? I do wish you rich blessings with that work."
Well, I am still waiting for Dr. Stoker to send me back his final corrected copy of my translation, together with his new introduction to it! But, of course, by now he is getting on toward ninety!
Now Stoker was not the only philosopher in South Africa to bring out a corrective on the work of Dooyeweerd. There were others, including Professor G.H.T. Malan of the University of the Orange Free State. He believed that the numerical sphere presupposes pre-numerical and numerable objects.
The previous Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Orange Free State, Dr. Venter, is not only a firm advocate of Christian philosophy in general. He is also a proponent of the Christian history of philosophy in particular. His specialised studies of Thomas Aquinas (whom he radically opposes), and of John Calvin (whom he enthusiastically champions), also deserve a wide audience. Professor Venter sent me a lot of very useful material on Calvin, which I managed to incorporate into my own book Calvin on the Sciences just before Venter died and went to be with the Lord.
Venter was then succeeded by Professor Dr. Pieter de Bruyn Kock. He was kind enough to act as the doctoral promoter of my Ph.D. on Communist Eschatology.
Now Kock is a very pronounced and strong anti-Barthian theologian, as well as a first rate philosopher. He started a massive eight-volume work on an introduction to Christian philosophy, which he proposed to call not "The Idea of the Philosophy of Law" (like Dooyeweerd) nor "The Philosophy of the Idea of Creation" as Stoker had done, but The Philosophy of the Idea of Recreation -- to be centred round the cosmic work of the second Adam Jesus Christ. He differed rather sharply from Dooyeweerd. He did not believe that the school or the university were creation ordinances -- but rather historical ordinances that developed later.
Unfortunately, Kock died at a relatively young age -- round about sixty -- before he was able to complete this massive work. I told him before he died that I was looking forward to seeing that work because my own thought was to develop a Philosophy of the Idea of Covenant, if the Lord would spare me. Here I would try to synthesise Herman Bavinck's Philosophy of the Idea of Revelation; Abraham Kuyper's Philosophy of the Idea of Sphere-Sovereignty; Dooyeweerd's Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea; Stoker's Philosophy of the Idea of Creation; and Kock's Philosophy of the Idea of Recreation. He said: "Well, may the Lord be with you and enable you to do it." And now he is gone to glory -- with that work still incomplete!
Kock sharply delineated the Philosophy of Dooyeweerd from that of Hepp, Stoker, F. Kuijper, Brummer and Anna Louise Conradie. He especially rejected the Philosophy of Van Peursen and Loen, which he regarded as syncretistic.
This Brummer just referred to, is another young South African Preacher-Philosopher who left South Africa and settled in Holland. There he received an appointment at the University of Utrecht. He has written a rather impressive critique of Dooyeweerd -- in English, I am happy to say -- entitled, Transcendental Criticism and Christian Philosophy.
In this work, which was his doctoral dissertation, Brummer claims to detect the latent influence of Kantianism in Dooyeweerd's thought. In this work, he especially questions: the Dooyeweerdian view of time; also the Dooyeweerdian view of the relationship between theology and philosophy; and further the relationship between common sense and scientific knowledge. (So too, by the way, does Van Til -- in depth!)
To Brummer, the Divine Logos or Word is the ultimate ground of everything. The Logos, the Word, is: the creative ground of all existence; the revelatory ground of all knowledge; the incarnative ground of all redemption; and the teleological ground of all consummation.
Last, as we round off some of the major South African Calvinist thinkers in this period prior to the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1961, we mention Professor Anna Louise Conradie. She trained under Professor Dr. Andrew H. Murray, the grandson of the great Preacher Andrew Murray, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town (as I myself did too). She subsequently became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Natal.
Dr. Anna Louise Conradie has tried to give an historical outline of the development of The Neo-Calvinistic Concept of Philosophy -- with special reference to the problem of communication. By the way, this work of hers has fortunately been published in the English language. It is a rather expensive book, but well worth study.
In this work of hers, she discusses the problem of communication -- in Calvin, Kuyper, Bavinck, Woltjer, Hepp and especially Dooyeweerd. She analyses Dooyeweerd's thought -- and she contrasts it with the various immanentistic and Romish systems of modern philosophy. She concludes that if a Christian philosophy is impossible -- then all philosophy is impossible!
We saw a little earlier that Anna Louise Conradie is in agreement with Potgieter, in his criticism of Dooyeweerd. She even criticised Van Til at that time. Van Til, she said, has not seen (or did not in 1940 see) the real danger pointed out by Dooyeweerd's critics such as Potgieter did at that time. If theology is controlled by the Dooyeweerdian philosophy formulated from Dooyeweerd's religious a priori, theology is made subject not (as it should be) to the objective norm of Scripture, but to the subjective religious experience of Dooyeweerd over which we have no control!
At this point, we will pause. For next, we must launch out into the last phase of the development of South African thought during the last two decades (1960-80). We shall then begin with an analysis of some of the greatest Afrikaner thinkers of this modern period in South Africa.
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