Courtesy of the Hultink Family Foundation, the Cántaro Institute is now the new home for the Reformational Digital Library (formerly known as the Reformational Publishing Project). All rights reserved.
Document: James H. Olthuis, The Reality of Societal Structures (Toronto, ON.: Institute for Christian Studies, n.d.).
Excerpt: The question for this paper is the status and nature of the structural entities which everyone experiences in his life; family, state, marriage, institutional church, business, labor union, etc. How is one to account for these structures, which we shall hereafter refer to as societal structures, philosophically? What is their ontic status? How is it possible that such structures retain their identity in spite of the change in individual members? How is it possible that marriage, to take an example, is still recognized to be marriage in spite of the changing forms of marriage in history?
Download the Document:
The Reality of Social Structures – J.H. Olthuis