Herman Dooyeweerd (1894

.

Now....let me introduce you to Dr. J. Glenn Friesen and his Premier Dooyeweerdian pages in which he elucidates, exposits, and renders illuminated and clear expositions of the Flying Dutchman’s Divine Philosophy.

This is my Canadian friend Glenn who believes passionately in what he calls Christian non-dualism. I share that passion.

Glenn’s Studies Relating to Herman Dooyeweerd ....... Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd

Glenn has written a concise epitome of Dooyeweerd's philosophy in 95 concise thesis.

Here is Thesis Number One:

Click on the picture below if you would like to have a pdf copy of all 95 Theses

Andrew Basden also has an impressive suite of Dooyeweerdian inspired web pages which can be accessed here < here >

And there is more.....

Another friend of mine, Christian journalist, author, speaker and independent researcher (I think that covers it!) Charles Strohmer, along with John Peck (British philosopher and theologian), has has brought Dooyeweerd’s philosophy into the very practical day to day reality of the biblical Wisdom Tradition.

See their excellent and unusual book Uncommon Sense :God’s Wisdom For Our Complex and Changing World (ISBN 0281054282 ). Click on the book cover for the Amazon link.

For the past few years Charles, who lives in rural Tennessee, has been beavering away in splendid scholarly isolation on his Wisdom Project. He is writing a book on how to apply the whole Wisdom Tradition to the Middle East and International Relations, especially since 9/11 .

And there’s still more.
Michael Morbey has written a cosmic visionary multi-disciplinary Dooyeweerdian inspired essay called ....

Parallels To the Byzantine-Hesychast, Divine Essence/Energies Distinction

.... which provokes, for the attentive reader, awesome, dramatic, disturbing and exhilarating perceptual and paradigm shifts through the mere act of reading words on a page. An amazing tour de force.

As far as I am concerned Michael’s work provides yet one more piece of evidence that “the map is not the territory”. How could it be?

You can download Michael’s seminal paradigm-busting paper by clicking on this picture by Wm Blake.

Wm Blake - The Ancient of Days Measuring Time 1794

The prism is a cosmic metaphor

"The most profound, innovative and penetrating philosopher since Kant."  (Giorgio Delvecchio)).

From Uncommon Sense (2001) page 305. Used with permission.

Newton was fascinated with properties of light and the colour spectrum because he thought it embodied the Word of God

Sir Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727)

North Wales, June 2007

$The Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd uses the metaphor of a prism to explicate his post-modern philosophy. See The Prism of Cosmic Time. He compares the multi-dimensional reality of our everyday experience of life and the world to the full suit of colours refracted by a prism. When the pure undifferentiated light of the sun hits one side of the prism and passes through it the light splits up and shines out the other side in the brilliant spectrum of the rainbow. Light passing through a prism is a metaphor for God’s creation and ongoing presence within the universe. The unrefracted light contains every colour but these colours become differentiated only in and through the refracting spectrum which is the created reality within which we live and move and have our being . Each colour coheres with the all the others, but none of the colours can be derived from or reduced to any other, and every colour has its own unique ‘position’ within the order of the spectrum relative to the others. This order is also an order of time. Dooyeweerd cautions us not to interpret this metaphor of the prism in a pantheistic or physical sense. Our vast, ancient universe is not an emanation or mere extension of God’s essence. Nevertheless the multi-faceted- creation does shine forth with an intensity of supra-temporal divine Light. The whole cosmos is a display of God’s uncreated energies in dynamic operation and interaction. For a Christian Eastern Orthodox Perspective on God’s uncreated Light see St Symeon's Vision of the Divine Light.pdf Dooyeweerd refuses to identify God’s Being (or essence) with any aspect of the creation itself, cosmic, physical , historical, psychological or linguistic and thus rejects the Platonic conception of an analogy of Being But his choice of the ancient symbol of the prism is fascinating because this demonstrates his belief that our experience in time in all its aspects has its ultimate origin in God alone and that our experience refers at every point always to a higher supra-temporal reality or totally of meaning which is beyond time. According to Dooyeweerd: The unrefracted light is the time-transcending totality of meaning of our cosmos with respect to its cosmonomic side and its subject-side. As this light has its origin in the source of light, so the totality of meaning of our cosmos has its origin in the Arché through whom and to whom it has been created.” (Herman Dooyeweerd, The New Critique of Theoretical Thought I, 102). The full meaning of life, the universe and everything exists beyond cosmic time, since time itself is the prism refracting the uncreated light of God’s glory into what we know as God’s creation, which exists within a temporal modal diversity of many aspects. See Glen Friesen’s online linked Glossary of Dooyeweerd's terms, ideas and concepts. To make sense of Dooyeweerd's cosmic vision one needs, in my view, some acquaintance with the Christian Eastern Orthodox distinction between God’s essence and God’s uncreated divine energies. The cosmos is not an extension of God’s essence but it does cohere with and arises out of Gods dynamic uncreated energies. For this all important distinction see Kallistos Ware on Essence&Energies.pdf and the paper on the Divine Light.pdf, from an Orthodox perspective by Bishop Auxentios Titular. May, 2010 $ shapeimage_12_link_0

“Herman Dooyeweerd is undoubtedly the most formidable Dutch philosopher of the 20th century....As a humanist, I have always looked at ‘my own tradition’ in search for similar examples. They simply don’t exist. Of course, humanists, too, wrote important books, but in the case of Herman Dooyeweerd we are justified in speaking about a philosopher of international repute.” Dr. P.B. Cliteur, president, Humanist League,  the Netherlands
“...the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, even Spinoza not excepted.” Professor G.D. Langemeijer, chairman of the  Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences

$All created temporal realty is a rainbow refraction of the uncreated light of God’s eternal Glory$