FORM-MATTER GROUNDMOTIVE

   a term used in the CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY of Herman DOOYEWEERD to signify the encounter between the old pre-Homeric Greek RELIGION of life and the later cultural religion of the OLYMPIC GODS. The older religion deified the eternally flowing stream of life which is unable to fix itself in any individual form but out of which transitory beings are generated whose existence is limited by an individual form with the result they are subjected to the fate of death. This is the MATTER motive of Greek thought which found its most pregnant expression in the worship of DIONYSUS. The form motive found in the later Olympian religion valued measure and harmony and rested on the essential DEIFICATION of the CULTURAL aspect of Greek society and the personification of cultural powers though the Olympian Gods. Its greatest expression was in the WORSHIP of the law-giver--the Delphic God-- APOLLO.