Notes and Reflection on Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview. Chapter 1. Thinking and Being.
A. Critique of empiricism and rationalism and the Kantian impasse. Empiricism which accepts sense perceptions as the only source of knowledge ends up with subjective representations or mental ideas disconnected from reality. Fluctuating and unstable sensations cannot allow us to see the essence of things.
“For as long as the human being has occupied himself with this problem, he almost always ends up on one side or another, either sacrificing knowledge to being or being to knowledge. Empiricism trusts only sensible perceptions and believes that the processing of elementary perceptions into representations and concepts, into judgments and decisions, removes us further and further from reality and gives us only ideas [denkbeelden] that, though clean and subjectively indispensable, are merely “nominal” [nomina] and so are subjective representations, nothing but “the breath of a voice” [flatus vocis], bearing no sounds, only merely a “concept of the mind” [conceptus mentis]. Conversely, rationalism judges that sensible perceptions provide us with no true knowledge; they bring merely cursory and unstable phenomena into view, while not allowing us to see the essence of the things. Real, essential knowledge thus does not come out of sensible perceptions but comes forth from the thinking of the person’s own mind; through self-reflection we learn the essence of things, the existence of the world.”
However, rationalism which argues that knowledge is attained by reflecting on the ideas of the mind fails to deliver its promise. Contrary to its claim (Descartes), the ideas of the mind are far from being clear and distinct and are basically circular or self-referential.
“No law of cause and effect can release the one who accepts the principle and starting point of idealism from the Circassian Circle [toovercirkel] of his representations: out of one representation he can only deduce another, and he is never able to bridge the chasm between thinking and being by reasoning.”
B. Root problem. Both modern empiricism and rationalism are premised on the dichotomy between the self and the world. Both the empirical concepts from representations and the ideas of the mind of the rationalist end up floating above the terra firma of reality much like building castles in the sky. The fatal outcome is Kant’s epistemological firewall, an unbridgeable chasm that rules out the possibility of bridging the self and the world, phenomenal knowledge (of appearances) and noumenal knowledge (of essence, “the thing in itself”).
Bavinck concludes,
“In both cases and in both directions, the harmony between subject and object, and between knowing and being, is broken. With the former [i.e., empiricism], the world is nominalistically divided into its parts; with the latter [i.e., rationalism], reality is hyper-realistically identified with the idea. In the former, the danger of sensualism and materialism threatens, and in the latter, that of idealism and monism. With both, the concept of truth, of “conformity of intellect and thing” [conformitas intellectus et rei], a correspondence between thinking and being, is lost. For in empiricism it falls together with the empirical, sensibly perceptible reality, and in rationalism it follows out on a correspondence between thoughts with themselves, on an internal clarity, on logical necessity. So in both directions the final question arises, whether there is truth, and [if so,] what it is….”
C. Bridging the premise of epistemological dichotomy. Knowledge of truth is possible if its epistemology is based on the Christian doctrine of creation. Creation confronts us as an objective reality which one may come to know in clear perception. Only on the acknowledgement of reality as God’s creation may one understand and uphold the harmony of subject and object, of thinking and being. That is to say, “Being is a reality with which the sense perception of the subject corresponds”, and “Knowledge of truth is possible only if we begin with the fact that subject and object, and knowing and being, correspond to each other.”
Bavinck accepts that all knowledge begins with sense perception. But he notes, “And out of the sensations, we do not deduce, by syllogisms, a world beyond ourselves, which then might not exist or which might exist wholly differently from what we perceive.” Furthermore, “Now it is indeed undeniable that our representations are connections of a mass of different perceptions received by our different senses, and these concepts, in turn, are abstractions and combinations, formed out of a great number of diverse representations. There is no experimental, mathematical proof available that our representations and concepts correspond to an objective reality.”
“[Mach concludes] It is the human being that brings order and regularity into phenomena and thus turns them into nature. He creates the “sufficient uniformity of our environment” necessary for science. The intellect is here, according to Kant himself, “the legislation for nature.” In the end, then, in spite of its own testimony , empirical criticism declares that science presupposes a being, something permanent and enduring, within the fluctuating of phenomena, and thus an essence, an idea of things.”
“However, this is no more than a desperate move [noodsprong]. For it is one or the other: the human intellect does this wholly arbitrarily, without the objective world offering any grounds for it, which means that the phenomenal world is shaped by our mind, nothing but an image of a dream, and thus, according to Nietzsche’s view, is simply something that we make up. Or the intellect is justified in doing this; it acts in accordance with its endowed nature and being, presupposing, too, that nature itself, which is interpreted by the intellect, contains the information for it. And as such, the intellect and nature must both exist in thought – the former subjectively and the latter objectively – and be brought forth from it…”
Hence, Bavinck asserts that knowledge of truth is possible only if we begin with the fact that subject and object, and knowing and being, correspond to each other.
“If the world can be the content of our knowing, it must itself be clear and distinguished by thought beforehand. Only as all things are from the “foreknowledge” [προγνωσις] of God are they altogether a “manifestation” [φανερωσις] of his thoughts. The universalia are in re [in reality], for they existed ante rem [before the thing] in the divine consciousness [bewustzijn]. The world would not be known to us if it did not exist, but it would not exist if it were not thought of beforehand by God. We know the things because they are, but they are because God has known them. The doctrine of the creation of all things by the Word of God is the explanation of all knowing and knowing about [kennen en weten], the presupposition behind the correspondence between subject and object…the universalia in re move over into our consciousness along the path of sense perception, then through the thinking activity of the “mind” [νους]. The world becomes, and can only become, our spiritual [geestelijk] property, for it is itself existing spiritually [geestelijk] and logically and resting in thought…”
“On this Christian standpoint, all autonomy of the human mind falls away, as if it could produce truth out of its own reason and through its own means. The human being is not the creator and former of the world; his understanding does not write its laws on nature, and in his scientific research he does not have to arrange things according to his categories. To the contrary, it is the human who has to conform his perception and thinking to God’s revelation in nature and grace: “Reality does not have to make itself comply with our reason, but rather, on the basis of the whole experience of the whole age, our thinking must seek to lay bare the metaphysic that God has woven into reality.” To enter into the realm of truth, we must become children: “It is of nature to bring forth, and freedom, the freedom brought from truth.” All knowledge consists in the conformity of our consciousness to the objective truth. One thus knows the truth to the extent that he himself is in the truth. To understand the truth, one must be of the truth…The human mind does not set a limit for itself in its search for knowledge, not even with Kant or Comte.”
D. The crux of Bavinck’s revelational and epistemological realism: All thinking and true knowledge naturally and indeed must conform to the reality of being as created and revealed by God. “It is the same divine wisdom [Goddelijke wijsheid] that created the world organically into a connected whole and planted in us the urge for a “unified” [einheitliche] worldview…it is also on this high point of knowledge that subject and object harmonize, as the reason within us corresponds with the principia of all being and knowing…It is the same divine wisdom that gives things existence and our thought objective validity, that bestows intelligibility to things and the power of thinking [denkkracht] to our mind, that makes the things real and our thoughts [denkbeelden] true. The intelligibility of things is the content of our intellect. Both being and knowing [het zijn en het kennen] have their “reason” [ratio] in the Word, through whom God created all things.
Reference.
Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview (Crossway, 2019).
BB: Bavinck Briefs.