BIBLICAL INTENTIONALITY
According to the Dutch Calvinist contemplative philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, "Only in the `heart' does the function of faith find its religious concentration, and from this spiritual root of our existence the direction of our believing is determined... [T]he function of faith is not merely a subjective terminal function of our individual existence, but the transcendental terminal function of the entire (earthly) reality. Without faith this reality cannot *exist*" (_New Critique_ II, pp.299,305). Elsewhere, Dooyeweerd points out that theoretical thought (or theoria), although characterized by an attitude that is intentional, not ontical (cf. Husserl), nevertheless takes place within a temporal total-structure of the act of knowing which is definitely ontically situated, and it is led by faith. The peculiar thing which I have noticed here, is that faith, in this Calvinistic functional sense, and intentionality, seem to flow together, and this is one of the reasons why I think that it is proper to speak contemplatively of faith-functioning/intentionality. Faith-functioning/intentionality in this cosmic sense is the *intentio animi* of the whole Creation, the leading edge of time. It is not faith-functioning-apart-from-Grace (which would be Gnosticism). Historically, intentionality appears to have devolved from the "logicization" of the *intentio animi* of contemplative mysticism, resurrected by the renegade Austrian priest, Franz Brentano, and transformed in the thinking of Edmund Husserl. D. W. Hamlyn, _A History of Western Philosophy_, Great Britain: Viking (Penguin Books Ltd.), p.318, specifically mentions this interesting link between the ancient *intentio animi* and modern intentionality, and the remarkable history of its transformation from Avicenna through the Scholastics, Franz Brentano, and Husserl to modern times is very helpfully outlined and discussed in Chapter 1:_"Intention" and "Intentionality" in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl_, of Herbert Spiegelberg, _The Context of the Phenomenological Movement_, The Hague / Boston / London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981. Note also Dr. Spiegelberg's important observation, gleaned from G. Sentinello, that the original meaning of "intentional inexistence" was not *non*-existence but "existence *within* something else" (p.26). From a Patristic and Reformational point of view this sense of intentionality as *in-dwelling* is characteristic of the penetrating, linking power of faith-functioning. On the relationship of faith-functioning to *indwelling* and *embodiment* see W. Jim Neidhardt, _The Creative Dialogue Between Human Intelligibility and Reality -- Relational Aspects of Natural Science and Theology_, The Asbury Theological Journal 41(2):59-83(1986). Note also Anthony Wilden's observations linking most modern concepts of intentionality (Brentano, Husserl), cathexis (Freud), project (Heidegger, Sartre), and goalseeking (non-mechanistic cybernetics) with the Hegelian conception of desire, in Anthony Wilden, _System and Structure Essays in Communication and Exchange_, London: Tavistock Publications, 1972, Second edition 1980, pp.41-42,65,67,143n.8. The Orthodox will speak of *apophasis*. Although Husserl never broke fully free of "scholastic" formulations, and even advocated the attempt to reach God without God by means of intentionality/ faith-functioning unaided by Grace (Steven W. Laycock and James G. Hart (eds.), _Essays in Phenomenological Theology_, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986, pp.1-2,7,169), nevertheless the Phenomenological doctrine of intentionality, whether he was fully aware of it or not, does mark his very significant, well-meant attempt to come to grips with the modal aspect of faith as the transcendental-terminal, cybernetic-directing function of the cosmos. It is not inappropriate, therefore, to stress Husserl's immanent, inner connection with the Reformed and Patristic vision of faith by speaking of the faith-functioning/intentionality of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd as "Biblical intentionality". Not only does this emphasis serve to remind students of *intentionality* that it is really *faith-functioning* with which they have to do, but it focuses attention on the remarkable connection, and key point of interpretation, that Dooyewwerd's *theoretical attitude* of thought, as I have mentioned, the antithetical *Gegenstand-relation* faith-oriented to the *transcendental direction of time*, which he described as only *intentional*, not *ontical* (_New Critique_ I, p.39), is none other than the classical High-Calvinist and Patristic *fideist* perspective, the "supra-temporal" view "from above", the view from the starting point of faith-functioning, in which the "turning around of the soul" or "conversion" has been made *intentionally* and *experientially* explicit by *descent into the heart* and *transcendental reflection* upon our part in Christ. This shift of perspective is structurally akin to the *inverse (or *reverse*) perspective* of Eastern Orthodox iconography (cf._New Critique_ II, pp.53-54) which marks a real *transformation of perspective* or "altered state of consciousness" well-known in the contemplative mystical tradition by personal experience through the *opening up* and *exercising* of *deepened intentionality / limit thinking / faith-functioning*. It is to approach the world and to reason from the vantage point of Election, from the position of having been *called out* ('epoche, refraining from, or *bracketing* as God's calling) before the foundation of the world / the foundational direction of time and seated in the Heavenly Places (Ephesians 1:20), this being simultaneously a deeper, more integral penetration of Reality. Of course, if we speak of "faith as the sight of reason" (also a Romantic concept) in Orthodoxy, we must mean something much more than the *visual faith- functioning* of Phenomenological *intentionality* as described by Husserl, or *la foi perceptive* of Merleau-Ponty, although these are analogues. If it is the "emotional faith" of Jacobi, this must be in the sense of total *heart-commitment* to that which lies *beyond being*, or in the manner of the "Desire for the Invisible" of the late Emmanuel Levinas, "a movement going forth from a world that is familiar to us, whatever be the yet unknown lands that bound it or that hides it from view, from an "at home" ["chez soi"] which we inhabit, toward an alien outside-of-oneself [*hors de soi*], toward a yonder" (Emmanuel Levinas, _Totality and Infinity_, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1969 [trans, from the French, _Totalite et Infini_, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), p.33). Radicalized *intentionality* in this sense is in fact the ancient *Wesensschau* of Patristic Orthodoxy, "the ontological mode of demonstration that arises when something utterly new becomes disclosed and our minds cannot but yield conceptual assent to its self-evident reality. Such an act of assent was also spoken of as the response of *faith* made in recognition and acknowledgement of a truth that seizes the mind and will not let it go...Faith is thus recognized again as the very mode of rationality adopted by reason in its fidelity to what it seeks to understand, and as such it constitutes the most basic form of knowledge from which all subsequent inquiry proceeds" (Pp.13-14 of Thomas F. Torrance, _Theological and Scientific Inquiry), in _Dedication Addresses The Center of Theological Inquiry *Reports from the Center, Number 2*_, Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, New Jersey). Alphonso Lingis writes that, "Intentionality is the openness of the mind to something transcendent to it, its receptivity with regard to something given. A moment of presence passes, and the mind finds itself again before the selfsame datum: the given itself -- intentionality is receptive, intuitive. But at the same time it receives the identity of what recurs the same -- intentionality is an act of identification, insight into the things themselves and *Wesensschau*, essential insight, are thus, in Husserl's conception, inseparable" (Alphonso Lingis, _Phenomenological Explanations_, Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986, p.4). I could go on and on, but I'll have to stop. Note Husserl's deep attachment to the *Theologia Deutsch* which synthesized the themes of Rhineland mysticism (P.167n.92 of James G. Hart, _A Precis of an Husserlian Philosophical Theology_, in Steven W. Laycock and James G. Hart (eds.), op.cit. Be sure to read Herbert Spiegelberg, op. cit., page 69. Evan M. Zuesse, _The Role of Intentionality in the Phenomenology of Religion_, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53(1):51-73(March 1985) is for diligent study, and note Husserl's return to the flesh and embodiment, and the importance of Heidegger. Alexander F. C. Webster, _Orthodox Mystical Tradition and the Comparative Study of Religion: An Experimental Synthesis_, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 23(4):612-649(Fall, 1986). Hieromonk Auxentios, Bishop Chrysostomos of Oreoi, and the Reverend James Thornton, _Notions of Reality and the Resolution of Dualism in the Phenomenological Precepts of Merleau-Ponty and the Orthodox Responses to Iconoclasm_, The American Benedictine Review 41(1):80-98(March 1990). Kenneth L. Schmitz, _At the Center of the Human Drama The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II_, Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993 (New territory for me, thanks to Dennis Martin).
June, 1997
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