THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

philosophy from the religious a priori -- we are in fact making theology subject not to the objectivenorm of Scripture but to a subjective religious experience of Dooyeweerd's over which we have nocontrol.I think it is true to say that on this particular point Van Til has "seen the light" since 1940. Todayhe is very critical of what this subjectivistic point of departure in Dooyeweerd's epistemology hasled to. On this particular point, Potgieter today stands vindicated over against Dooyeweerd (andeven against the Van Til of 1940). For Van Til has distantiated himself, especially over the lasttwenty years, very sharply from Dooyeweerd on this point. Indeed, Van Til has come over more tothe position of Potgieter (and Stoker).Now Potgieter, amongst other things, is Chairman of the Christian Mission to the Jews Society ofSouth Africa. In that capacity, he wrote a very interesting little book called Christ and Israel -- oneschatology. He says in this book: "In agreement with the principle laid down in Romans 11 verse11, the conspicuous coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles (compare Romans 11:12-15) willrouse Israel to jealously. The reciprocity of the stimulating action of the fullness of the Gentiles andthat of Israel, is evident. On the one hand, the acceptance by presumably many Gentiles -- leadingto their fullness -- arouses jealousy in Israel. With the result that they turn to the Messiah. And onthe other hand, the fullness of Israel means blessings untold for the Gentiles -- and culminates inlife from the dead for them."Yet I believe that perhaps the greatest living thinker in South Africa, a man now approaching hisninetieth birthday, is the great Hendrik Stoker. Prof. Dr. Stoker has had a long innings as one of theworld'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 SouthAfrica's involvement. He favoured strict neutrality. As a result, General Smuts, then the PrimeMinister of South Africa, jailed Stoker and put him in a concentration camp at a place calledKoffiefontein.In that concentration camp there were numbers of other "hard-nosed" Calvinists who had alsoexpressed the desire for South Africa to remain neutral. They included a young lawyer called JohnVorster -- who later became Prime Minister of South Africa. Later, at the end of the 1960's, asPrime Minister, he passed a law requiring all public education in South Africa from that timeonwards to be clearly Christian in the teaching of ever subject. Clearly, Vorster was Stoker's mostinfluential "graduate" from the makeshift "University of Koffiefontein." For Stoker, in theconcentration 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, andtaught them for a number of years. Then he issued pieces of paper that he had drawn up -- beinghonorary 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 ofVollenhoven and Dooyeweerd. The interesting thing is that both Dooyeweerd and Vollenhovenconsider Stoker to be their equal . Van Til has said recently -- just two months ago, when visitingme in my own home as my guest -- that Stoker is, in his opinion, the world's leading thoroughlyChristian philosopher.Stoker as a young man went to Germany and wrote a doctoral dissertation there under the greatMax Scheler -- on the subject of Conscience ("Das Gewissen"). Although Stoker usually writesagainst a wealthy background of psychological experiences, he does tend to stress the cosmologicaland phenomenological aspects of philosophy and of reality rather more than he does theepistemological aspects (in the way the Amsterdam school does).