Differentiation and historical development

The Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd is one of the few Christians to take seriously the structural, creational component of historical development. There seems to be a pronounced tendency amongst many believers to assume that the movement of history in itself constitutes a kind of falling away from a perfectly good social order of a static sort. Accordingly some conservative believers tend to idealize or romanticize a particular moment in history when society was less complex than it is now.

According to Dooyeweerd, however, there are norms for historical development. History is not just a haphazard process. One of these norms in differentiation, which means that, as human beings discover what God would have them do in his creation, there is a tendency for these activities to spread themselves out into distinct communities, such as schools, labour unions, business enterprises, artistic co-operatives, &c.

However, some confuse this normative process of differentiation with an antinormative fragmentation. Darryl G. Hart appears to be one of these, as indicated in his recent Recovering Mother Kirk (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003). Here are some representative passages, written within the context of the changing place of women in society:

The modern political economy weakens the family by giving to large impersonal institutions such as schools, hospitals, businesses, and governments the tasks formerly performed by the family.

As for the institutional church:

The church was closely tied and responsive to the Christian families and communities in which it existed. The heads of the church functioned in a way similar to fathers in a family. They governed their people, taught them and watched over them, and when they were in need responded to that need. The church, in other words, was more like a people or a family than an impersonal institution.

There's more:

[P]remodern society supported the idea that God deals with his people primarily in groups or communities, not as individuals. The church, accordingly, constitutes a people or a community, not a collection of autonomous selves.... Individuals in community do not choose who they are; rather, their identities arise from being born into and being members of the community (pp. 130-131).

There is much to like in what Hart is doing in his book. He even in places comes close to acknowledging what Abraham Kuyper calls sphere sovereignty. But he seems to dislike the process of differentiation that is its foundation. A reading of Dooyeweerd would help him to distinguish better between legitimate societal differentiation and the social fragmentation that he rightly decries.