Video Transcript: Aspects of Reality part 3 with Roy Clouser and Henry Reyenga

Henry - So I am having such a great time going back both to memory lane when I learned Herman Dooyeweerd aspects back in the 1980s, at Dordt College in  Sioux Center, Iowa. And then having the privilege to be with Dr. Clouser, who  actually studied with Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd in the late 60s and early 70s. Did  his dissertation on Dr. Dooyeweerd. So we're talking about the aspects. And just to this is part three. And let me just go over what we talked about. We talked  about the quantitative, we talked about the spatial, the kinetic, the physical, the  biotic, the sensory, the logical, and now we're launching into the next one. And  I'm curious if you can guess what it is, just make a guess. I like people just try to  think about it. Like if they think about logical there with part one and part two,  well, could it be the historical, historical  

Dr. Clouser - special meanings to this. A lot of people think history means  whatever happened in the past. Dooyeweerd points out, it does not. Most of  what's happened in the past, we don't think is historically important. This has to  do with human ability to take a natural material and form something new. Which  also means to take human beings and form something new, right, such as a  business, a school, a state, and so on.  

Henry - The development of power, achievement, technology, techniques.  

Dr. Clouser - So sometimes people have proposed it should really be called  formative, or technical. It has to do with bringing about artifacts. And what  people sometimes fail to realize, or think of very much is that human, social  communities are also artifacts, people form them. So this has to do with the  important formations that have taken place. History records the transmission of  the power to form a culture, and culture is all the things that humans produce.  

Henry – What do you call the term historic also deserve some common, though,  is a similar familiar one. This is because so many people think of it as referring  to everything that has happened in the past?  

Dr. Clouser - Dooyeweerd gives an interesting example. Historians actually  debated whether part of the Battle of Waterloo that needed to be recorded, was  the farmers trying to harvest the crops that were in the way of the coming battle,  they can see it. They're trying to get the crops out of the way. Is that part of the  battle? Is that historically important, right? Most people would agree no, it was  important to the, to the farmers. But it for as far as history is concerned, what's  really important is who won the battle. It defeats Napoleon that ends his empire,  Europe is repartioned out. Congress and the role that, but but not the farmers  gathering their crops. But that happened. Unless there's some criteria for what's 

important, historically, you end up saying that everything is history, and then just  writing the history of anything takes as long to write as it took to happen. 

Henry - There's a popular video game that many of you have probably looked at  over the or your children, young children have played it's called civilization. And  how civilization works is that you start at, like someplace way in the distant  future. And then it goes through these various civilizations. And each civilization  has a unique contribution to culture, like one culture, some fears about the  technology of bronze, and another culture, fireworks, or gunpowder, or I believe  are the Chinese. But anyway, if a culture developed it, that particular strength  would be accented more for their power and development. So it's almost as if  Dooyeweerd was the creator of the video game. What he did, rolling over in his  grave now. Okay next, let's just go to linguistic, the social or the symbolic  communication. So what's the linguistic aspect? 

Dr. Clouser - and do notice how there's an order to these, because intuitively, I  think everybody sees that, you'd have to be able to form concepts in order to  plan what to do with a natural material, you'd have to be able to form natural  materials, and and have some experience with that. And then form sounds or  marks that you make to symbolically stand for other things. Now we have a  language. And then that's going to make human social relations possible  because humans are going to be able to communicate. And as one writer  pointed out, it's almost more important that humans were able to talk to  communicate to another human, what they were thinking about and what they  were feeling internally. More important than being able to have a symbol that  points to something else. This is tree and the book is over here. That's  important. But it's more important to be able to communicate plans, feelings,  objections, recommendations, then you have a real social bond.  

Henry - Well, it's interesting that you know, before we talked the last session  about active and passive and in language itself, you have the active voice, the  passive voice, I mean language itself is that way where words are the acted  upon or the word can act on. 

Dr. Clouser - Active/Passive distinction borrows this from language, right  applies it in other ways, as well. So people have and I made the point that many, a great many people think that logic only applies the only things that have logical properties are propositions and arguments. But note, if they have, if things have  passive logical properties then they are distinguishable. conceivable, right?  Unless they are, we can't use our logic to grasp them. So that's just as  important, the ways in which things exhibit properties passively as well as  actively. 

Henry - Now we're talking about like, philosophers and ideas that reduce  aspects. So if I go back to historical actually and look at that. Let's look at that  real quick. Is there any philosopher who reduced the last one, we talked about  the historical?  

Dr. Clouser - Who wants to say this was the key? Yeah, yes. Yes, in fact,  

Henry - I mean, try and guess who it was. I'm going to guess. Okay. You guys  think that I don't know this from 30 years ago, and I could be wrong. I'm being  vulnerable everybody. I am being transparent Hegel.  

Dr. Clouser – Oh, no. Not doing linguistic. 

Henry – No, history.  

Dr. Clouser – Historical, oh, excuse me. Oh, so I'm backing up. Alright. And he  has the great all encompassing mind. Okay. All right, which equals God, in under some circumstances, and it includes everything. But the process by which it  comes to self realization. He says is history. History, therefore encompasses all  reality.  

Henry - So I got it right? Yeah. Did you see that everybody? I got this right. And  you actually didn't think I was gonna get it? Right. And I know, you didn't think  that I got it. Right. So historically,  

Dr. Clouser - another version of it. Okay, present today, for epistemology for a  general theory of knowledge. Okay, there are a number of thinkers who argue  that we create language, language creates our experience. So we create our  

experience. So we're not finding things that are true independent of us. Give up  that stuff about truth. We can't go back to linguistics now.  

Henry - The next. Okay, so I got it right on historical and now on linguistick? Dr. Clouser - Yeah, but that's the connection between the two.  Henry - Oh, so there's like this one plays with each other.  

Dr. Clouser - We have the form of, formitive power, one of the things we form is  language. Okay. So they're called historicists. So all the all the things that we  believe are we have produced,we actually produce our own experience, our 

experience is produced by our language. That's what allows us to think of things the way we do in the past and we form therefore, we form our world.  

Henry - So in a sense, that group of people are a partnership between the  historical aspects and the linguistic. 

Dr, Clouser - Yeah, sure.  

Henry - Okay. So what group is that again?  

Dr. Clouser - Well, modern pragmatism does that. Not to pick on anybody in  particular, but his initials are Richard Rorty. Richard Rorty, it says, says things  just exactly like what I just described.  

Henry - But hold on. So the linguistic, sometimes I have a hard time getting the  idea of symbol. And then there's a whole question of nominalism. And realism  and word. I mean, okay, we're launching into this. I mean, bear with me. So  we're launching into that. So nominalism, name language, when it's called? 

Dr. Clouser - Well, that has to do with universals. It's an old old problem and  was raised, even before Plato, but Plato's famous for his treatment of it, okay.  How's it come about? That we can recognize this object that object the other  

object, objects can only be in one place at one time, but they're they exhibit  qualities that are in many places at once? What kind of a clear thing is that?  There are many blue things that are my square things. And how do we  recognize all the blue things as blue? Now his famous theory was, there's  another dimension to reality, and in this other dimension there is, there are  perfections. There's the Perfect Blue, there's the perfect square, there's the  perfect chair, there's the perfect, whatever. And all the stuff that we experience  in this world are imperfect copies of the perfections in Plato's great barnyard in  the sky. So and he puts all of mathematics there, all the numbers, all the  fractions, lines, points, triangles and perfect circles, things we never see. In this  world, there's never a perfect circle we can draw. Right? And how do we get the  idea? Well, our minds are in tune with this world of perfection. Well, those are  universals. That's his theory of universals. What that means? What all the  instances when you use the same term for many, many individuals, you're  naming a Universal property property held by more than one thing at the same  time. And his answer to how we can how that can happen is that they're all  copying the perfect the perfect model for what is green or red or square, or  whatever in this other world. A nominalist says, no, no, no, this other world is all  ridiculous. Forget it, we do not ever experience the same property. Properties  are just like things they are individual. They're only in one place at one time, 

nothing shares the same shade of blue. Note, I don't know three to three, very  relativistic.  

Henry - So this says the Historical Linguistics,  

Dr. Clouser - what's common to the many individuals that we talked about, it's  only the linguistic name we give them. That's the only thing. That's where you  get nomina, name, name. So one of the early ones says, The Universal is  nothing but the breath of a voice, pronouncing a name. So we say blue what do  all the blue things have in common. Nothing in them, that we call them, all that  same name. That's, that's instead of Plato's other world. We, by the way  Dooyeweerd gives a very powerful critique of both those views. Okay. They're  both eminently rejectable.  

Henry - Why are they religious?  

Dr. Clouser - Okay, I didn't say they were religious I said they were rejectable. Henry - well rejectable, but I'm just calling them Religious,  

Dr. Clouser - Neither one of them will fly. Well, in the early thinkers, like Plato,  Plato not only wants there to be these universal exemplars in the other world,  that things in this world copy, but they're divine, they play a role that's partly a  substitute for God, they're eternal, uncreated changeless. And they have a great 

influence in making this world what it is. There's a world of space and matter in it in Plato's ontology, but it would be total chaos. Unless the form world impressed  itself unless the world of the perfections and the laws of mathematics impress  order onto the world. And the only reason this world comes out to be imperfect  copies of these things, is the matter that you have to work with is so intrinsically  imperfect, it can't hold the reason they can't perfectly reflect the universe. So  universal wil start out. And part of their role is religious. And Plato, when he  called them forms in rather than universal calls them forms, and he says there is a highest one, the highest form, the form of what it is to be a form, I guess.  Right, right. And he calls it the God and father of all things. He's not shy at all  about 

Henry - the term from a distant past. Just came back to my brain and it's  somehow in the category of Plato, the unmoved mover, that plane  

Dr. Clouser - that's Aristotle.

Henry - that's Aristotle. Okay. I'm with the Greeks. Okay, don't judge me too  quickly. You didn't even know that. Okay? It's so that  

Dr. Clouser - Plato's most famous student. for him, for Aristotle, too, there is a  huge difference between matter in space, which would be chaotic, were not for  the orderliness of the mathematical truth, especially logical that impress  themselves there and bring about a cosmos rather than a chaos. For Aristotle  that that impression happens here. This is our world, and it's at the center of the  universe. Because it's the worst place in the universe, not the best. It's like the  dream where all the refuse goes. And every layer of the universe as we go out  from Earth has more and more rationality, less and less matter, until finally you  come to the realm that's inhabited only by thought Thinking itself, Whoa, the  perfect, the perfection, the logical perfection here. He calls that God. He also  calls it the unmoved mover. What he means is it's changeless. And it brings  about change, not by exercising an effect on, a direct effect the way we usually  think of one thing producing change in another, but only because all of the  things in this course part of reality, the course part of the universe, so strives to  be like that. So without changing itself, it changes other things because they're  attractive.  

Henry - Now, one thing I noticed in the case, we talked about logical, historical,  and linguist, linguistic, just the last three. And when you're talking like this, you  really see the connections, all kind of working themselves out to be absolutely  

absolutizing, so you got Aristotle, there's logic, there's the history, there's the  development, there's linguistic naming, is that real, not real, Plato, all of it is  fascinating how that though the Greeks were centuries ago, Dooyeweerd sees  aspects that other philosophers have reduced one aspect or another?  

Dr. Clouser - Yes, of course, what Dooyeweerd wants to do we start philosophy  on the basis of the knowledge we have of God in Christ. And that means that all  of the properties and laws that we find in creation, the kinds of properties and  the laws that we find in creation have been created, called into being by God.  None of them are God's uncreated originating being that transcends all of that,  because he brought all that into existence. God enters into his creation,  however, and takes on these characteristics, takes them into himself, often,  eternally. I mean, that doesn't mean there's a time when God didn't have it, and  began to God, there never was a time God wasn't wise. But Proverbs 8 says  that wisdom is His creation, right, even wisdom, so I think that's a model for the  way to understand how God possesses his attributes. And I think that model, I  call it an incarnational model, in the same way, as God took the real, the person  of Jesus Christ, who is a creation, he was a human being, into himself, so that  Christ becomes the human side of God, God becomes the divine side of Christ. 

So God took into himself, characteristics of personality, for example, and be able to know things in the world and to react and interact with human beings. So  rather than to than say, oh, no, God just has perfections. And that's it. And he  doesn't really love anybody. He doesn't really get pissed off at anybody. No, he  gets really angry. He really loves people He grieves when they do evil. He  rejoices when people repent. The Scripture affirms all of that. And the people  that identify God with a platonic perfection say no, he doesn't.  

Henry - One more thing about linguistic that I find fascinating. Okay, so the  internet, the worldwide web, if you were to say, what is the sort of glue that holds Google together, it's the linguistic, it's the keywords. It's the relevant searches,  search for language, the language that solves the problem, the information age,  and these start becoming closer to who people are and how they operate with  our smartphones and how they operate. So we have this beautiful language  that's now becoming sophisticated and others algorithms written about the  words and and how people feel a lot of this is irrelevant stuff for a day.  Dooyeweerd could not have dreamed about an aspect like this could be so  functionally relevant.  

Dr. Clouser - In his terminology, a smartphone is an artifact that we produce. It's  made of natural materials, we form them yes. So that this is a formative product. And it's linguistically qualified, because that that is its intrinsic purpose, is to be  able to see it and say, you now convey  

Henry - like and get my phone out. And they talk right back to interesting. Next  one is social, social interaction. Now hold on a second. That's an aspect of  reality. That's just something we do. How we  

Dr. Clouser – Well sure but we do it in a specific way. This doesn't mean social  in the thick sense that everything from here on is. This is the beginnings.  Humans, once they have language can interact socially, in such a way that They have status, they have social position. Some people have authority, some don't.  Okay, so he points out that a house is a formative object that we create. If it's  more than just a hut or a lean to if it's actually got rooms, usually the rooms  exhibit the social status of the people that use them. So the master bedroom is  bigger,  

Henry – So for western culture the Master Bedroom is bigger.  Dr. Clouser - Well, that tends to be true in most cultures.  

Henry – Parents, you know, the elders have status. It's even in the architecture.

Dr. Clouser - If you just have a tent. That doesn't apply. But but the buildings  themselves betray or exhibit this business of social ranking right? One of the  chief properties to social property I think is respect, right? And whether that's  branded or it's denied, and people can get very upset about that kind of thing. 

Henry - whether it's rude and what's not restaurant rude, not really when people  cite you, we have that people smart class because we're putting you in tune with what is socially out there so that you do well as a leader.  

Dr. Clouser - And there are standards of courtesy. We all know that those differ  very much from place to place. But the point is people have them. They're not  without them. Where there are other humans, there are such things. 

Henry - I have a good story, I think and see if it applies if it doesn't, it's just a  good story. So at one of the churches, actually the church with Dr. Feddes, we  actually had a buggy driver at the local race track. Now, you know, none of us  are into gambling or anything like that. So I'm kind of on thin ice to tell the story  but I'll tell you anyway. Okay, so any he that was his job, and he and his wife  came to know the Lord. But he's been at that for 20, 30 years, riding rural  buggies. And so I was talking to him one time, and we're talking about the  horses. So he was talking about this horse and everything. And then and then  he said well, that one went Amish. And then he talked about this one, and then  that one went Amish. Amish? Like how does the horses go Amish? Well, he  said, Brother Joseph, wants to have a faster horse than brother Henry. So what  they do is, they come to the racetrack and buy the horses, the faster horse, the  faster horse, they pay cash. In fact, they're some of the best buyers of the  horses. So the social connection between brother Joseph and brother Roy and  brother Henry, we both want a horse that's just a little faster than the next guy.  And Amish, they don't have cars, right, but they want to if they're going to have  one horse, that they want to be the fastest horse. Is that? So that's sort of what  we're talking about. We have a social, you know, there's rules in that social laws  within the social laws within certain social classes,  

Dr. Clouser - And speak of the Amish they have it in spades. I mean, you is they  have their protocols and if you violate it, right. Nobody will talk to you. That's  your shunned. Right? Right. Right. And that's a social stigma, to be shunned.  

Henry – Right. Now, many of you are entering ministry, and you're you come out of a certain strata. And you're here doing bi-vocational ministry and as you lead  people, you'll come with various, a diversity of people that will come and follow 

because the whole world needs Christ. What did you say at dinner about?  Luther, he said something about a lion or a cat or something like that? 

Dr. Clouser - As he said, The Gospel doesn't need to be defended. It's like a  lion, it just needs to be let loose.  

Henry - It just needs to be let loose. So you are going to let the gospel loose.  But as the gospel was forward, you will find that many people that are not even  in your social class will start to coming connect, getting a connection to you  because the gospel has changed their life. And it's important that the social  understanding is with them as leaders.  

Dr. Clouser - Yes. And, of course, the Christian understanding of that is that  there are definite limits to this idea of social prestige and how much give  according to that what's praised in Scripture is that people do not regard  someone else's social status and treat them all alike and the insistence that the  church do that. Right. So you're not kissing up to somebody who just because  they're wealthy  

Henry - or you're not getting in ministry to manipulate them is to serve everyone  the same. That's right. Is there anybody that reduced the social aspects, you  can think of? 

Dr. Clouser - well, there's no one that said all reality is social, or all knowledge  is founded there. No, I don't know of that.  

Henry - It's just everywhere.  

Dr. Clouser – Yeah. And it's amazing isn't it. I was just thinking Jesus gives this  one illustration? He says one time to His disciples, when you go to a feast,  where do you look to see the most important people? You look at the head table. No, it's the waitress because she's serving people. pretty radical. 

Henry - okay. So, sociology, is sociology social? 

Dr. Clouser - Sociology, as that term is used for discipline includes a great deal  more than the social, yes, all right. So, we should be clear, it kind of has its own  ground there, it starts there, but almost immediately goes to relations between  the social and other other aspects of our society. It goes to considering issues in the law or in ethics, or in art, or and these are all other aspects. So generally  speaking, people who call themselves sociologists, are concerned with these 

basic social issues, but then applying them elsewhere. It's not restricted to  society. 

Henry - Right. But I bring that up, because sociology is a science of the study of the social.  

Dr. Clouser – But that almost has no delimitation, since its practice. 

Henry – I see, it was like anything to do with human interaction is studied.  Economic, the frugal use of resources. So this is not just business here. This is  an economics  

Dr. Clouser – That's right. It's how things exhibit economic worth. And that  something has to be scarce to be economically valuable. So if, if air is plentiful  for everybody, and nobody gets charged for clean air yet, then it's not worth  anything, nobody will pay for it. Right? But if, if a resource is limited, right,  people used to think things such as gold and diamonds are very limited,  therefore the rare, rare, rare, rare gems, therefore the price goes up. And what  we're what Dooyeweerd's emphasis here is to see that the Principles of  Economics, the law of supply and demand, diminishing returns and the like,  apply to everything in creation, right? Everything has an economic has  economic and economic side to it. So a church is not a business, it's not there to make a profit, but it has a business side to it. So does a state, so does a family,  a business is right there. In the middle of economic, they're there to make a  service or a product that they can sell and provide a living for their employees  and make a profit make a profit.  

Henry - You know, a lot of families don't see how the economic relates there. We have some classes on life skills. Enterprise 101. Dr. Feddes has been working  on a class that will be on soon maybe by the time you see this down the road  that class will already be up about life skills. And a lot of it refers to the frugal  use not only of money, but of time and space. There's a lot to successfully living  in the world. And the economic is not just reduced to money. What about an  absolutizer? Who absolutizes economics? I'm guessing it's Marx but  

Dr. Clouser - actually Marx is a materialist. Okay, so he calls himself a dialectical materialist. Marx's position is roughly there is matter, matter is ultimate, it's  uncreated. It's the metaphysically ultimate reality  

Henry - But he talks about people who have more people have less

Dr. Clouser - but matter has within it an intrinsic law of development, the  dialectical  

Henry – The dialectical. Write that down and there will be a quiz question. Okay,  go ahead. 

Dr. Clouser - So, there's one principle it evokes it's opposite, they come in  conflict and they produce something new. These then split apart and do the  same thing. Okay, that's rough, but that's right. Yeah. Until you get living things  and then you get humans and humans are to be understood as beings that are,  what they are because of what they do for a living, what qualifies a human being is his work. So work and the economic exchange, the work for, for money or for  goods, characterizes all of human society and his claim is that that whatever  form the human society takes in the forms of work and exchange of goods  determines the kind of society you get and the beliefs that people will hold. So  all beliefs from social on are the products of the economic system in which they  arise. That way,  

Henry – How resources are dispersed in a culture  

Dr. Clouser – determine what people believe and he thought that there was no  fixed human nature. So that if you got the right kind of society in which  everybody shared everything, and they didn't compete for economic goods, the  whole idea of private ownership would just disappear in the generation. So  because people are infinitely malleable there, if we can really make people to be good communist people, where they just naturally share everything, rather than  competing, to have more.  

Henry - So his belief was in the goodness of humanity.  

Dr. Clouser – It's not so much the goodness, because you can be corrupted by  capitalist society, and then want more and more and more and more and then  you'll be the evil guy. So it's deterministic. He's got this is these are the causes,  it all comes from matter But once you get to  

Henry - Matter is the highest.  

Dr. Clouser - That's the, that's the divine reality, self existent that generates  everything else. But for the explanation of human human life. As soon as you  come to social and economic, you get a society you have exchange of goods by means of work, and then one stage that that can't help by going through is  owners and workers, right. But then that's got to be overcome, because that's 

way inferior to just not competing with each other, sharing all the goods and  everybody's happy. And it really was that idealistic. Unrealistic, 

Henry - unrealistic and utopian, we call it sometimes. Now on the economic,  there's a lot of ways to think about this. In ministry, you bi-vocational you must  have the frugal use of resources to be able to even do ministry, if you're doing  web marketing, nowadays, they have like, they give you analytics so that you  can frugally use the resources to know if your your site is even relevant is even  getting hit or interested in, too. So you know, this, you think about what  Dooyeweerd did, It has not just philosophic ramifications. But as we're talking  about, through these presentations, there's so many meaning moments I get  whoa, you know, one of the things that, you know, my father was Dutch and  everything about being raised was the frugal use of resources in moderation.  And, and that was Michigan, that's where we live. And it's fascinating, one fruit  of that is that it's a very prosperous people. The second most influential people  in the United States are in this area, and they give to the kingdom and we're  grateful for that. But I will tell you, the most of them considered themselves poor  their entire life. Because of that frugal, you know, I'm not, I'm gonna pinch a  penny. But it actually there's a good side to that, of course, there's you can  overdo that anything can be overdone.  

Dr. Clouser - So even the Vanderbilts thought they were Dutch? 

Henry - I don't know, they might have been American Dutch. Okay, so this one,  the how do you pronounce that? 

Dr. Clouser - Justitial. This has to do with justice. It has to do with the fact that  once we get a society we and we are exchanging goods and so on the whole  matter of what's fair in dealing with other people, comes really to the for and  exerts its force in human life and thinking and society. So we do experience  some things as fair and just and others as outrageously unfair and unjust. And  so this is what leads to the establishment of the State as an institution. There's  confusion in the United States, we call the divisions of the national state, states.  So it's confusing. But the traditional term for the political institution is the state  and the government is the ruling body in the state. Okay, so now, what's the  what's the nature of the state? Well, we analyze  

Henry - the pursuit of happiness is Liberty  

Dr. Clouser - it's to establish an order of public justice, right? What Dooyeweerd  put it.

Henry - Now Jefferson kind of picked up on you know, like, the purpose of the  state and, you know, rights 

Dr. Clouser - he says, the purpose of government is to pass laws to protect  rights.  

Henry – Right. I mean, everybody knows that.  

Dr. Clouser - We have to he, he says it's self evident that people all men are  created equal and they have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and what  

Henry - do you have a problem with?  

Dr. Clouser – I do. 

Henry - Oh, my God, here we go. Okay, so you Africans out there who are  watching this, we have a little bit debate here about Thomas Jefferson, one of  our founding fathers,  

Dr. Clouser - Jefferson takes Christian ideas. And he flips them, he turns them  upside down from the way they had been believed for centuries. The Christian  position wasn't people are born with rights sticking in them like feathers in an  eagle, it's that God had built laws into creation, such as the principle be just to  others be loving to others, but particularly now we're talking about the justice to  treat one another fairly and justly. Okay. And that's what gives us rights, because the laws are God's laws, and they govern all of reality, we have the right to be  treated justly by other people, because they have the obligation to be just to me, as I do to them. So it's not that the rights are first and we make the laws to  protect them. It's since the laws are already there, and we're born under them.  And that's why we have rights. And if you think that's a silly distinction,  

Henry - I mean, I feel sort of it is I can't quite see that big of a difference.  

Dr. Clouser - But but here's the here's the difference. If it's the laws that are  primary and the rights are the result, then you cannot sensibly argue over who  has rights and who doesn't. Everybody will, because laws are universal, they  govern the whole creation. All our debates, so you can't have a society in which  you say, Indians don't have any rights, blacks don't have any rights. Women  don't have any rights. 

Henry - So we're arguing all these groups that have rights, because it says we  have rights but really, if the law says that all are treated fairly. And this is the  word all.  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah. I have there's a line in the, in my first book, when I'm  explaining this, and I said, this means that the Christian view of government is  the government should not favor Christians, or anybody else. Governments  should be as even handed in it's treatment of all citizens as it can possibly be.  

Henry - That's public justice.  

Dr. Clouser - Yes. Public Justice. 

Henry - Interesting. Can anybody absolutize this aspect? 

Dr. Clouser - No, I mean, there are people that have emphasized its importance that starts even with Aristotle and Plato. And Aristotle says justice is the bond  that binds men to states. And elsewhere, he calls humans, a political animal  meaning someone who's concern is justice and wants to wants to see that  enforced means that you're safe in your person. In your possessions and your  family.  

Henry - Okay, the aesthetic. We're almost done here. Harmony, surprise, fun.  What is that about?  

Dr. Clouser - That's still controversial. A lot of people think the aesthetic has to  do with what is beautiful. Yeah. I think what is beautiful is part of it. But it doesn't  characterize the whole aspect. Right? And Dooyeweerd thinks that, too, it  doesn't do that. We often are fascinated by something like a Gargoyle, but it's  not beautiful. Or to be a little more gruesome, an accident site can be  fascinating. We just can't take our eyes off it even though it's also disgusting.  okay. Others of his followers have proposed other things Dooyeweerd said it  was harmony, but I don't know how harmonious the gargoyle is. Harmonious  with what. 

Henry - Is that really just like a created one? Like,  

Dr. Clouser - no, we have an aesthetic sense. Okay. And it's exhibited  

Henry - I see the thing is beautiful, we've noticed, I always say that a great  Facebook ad has to be noticed. And it can be noticed in a lot of dimensions from beauty to emotion. There's something if it's not, people won't even click it. 

Dr. Clouser - But well, this, this includes beauty and has to be more than that.  So I tried one time I wrote a little essay. And I proposed that the central  meaning of this was what we enjoy, enjoyment, which is not just a feeling  because when I look at the accident, I can feel repulsed but in a sense I still  enjoy looking at it. And in that way it will also include not only the fine arts but  sports why do we Why do we like to go to a ballgame we enjoy seeing people  compete and show us spectacular with a possibility  

Henry - like in the area of like story a good book. Like, you know story would like often takes us out of our world. And and we talk a lot of times and the interesting speakers have the metaphors and stories in their interesting to listen to. I've had you have had in my life for almost two weeks now. It's like, You're interesting  

because you see the creative side of the story and I'm just saying and really in  all of life has that aspect. 

Dr. Clouser - Yes, everything has is potentially has their aesthetic value, one  way or another now we call something a work of art. When that piece, whatever  it is a piece of music, a painting is actually quantified by the terms of the  aesthetic aspect. That's the one in which it functions as the highest one in which it functions and so on. It gives away more of a, that's a key to its nature. So you  take a piece of stone, and whatever aesthetic value, it has very limited, right?  And then you carve a beautiful statue out, right? And everybody says, wow,  there's Michelangelo's David, yes.  

Henry - Okay, so there's an ethical, you wrote that ethical aspect, as a term is  used here to have norms concern with loving or benevolence.  

Dr. Clouser - Okay, that's better than self giving. It doesn't mean just self giving  love. That's the kind of love that the New Testament describes God is having for  us. But the commandment here about this as an aspect of our life is more  follows the second commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Now that includes yourself. Not just self giving. It's not just altruistic. Your not to  sacrifice my own good for somebody else.  

Henry - Yeah, well, we wrote down that from Wikipedia, Wikipedia. Correction, 

Dr. Clouser - I love my neighbor, as much as I do myself, nothing wrong with  loving myself. And I balanced my good with my neighbors. If Surely, if I can give  up something that's relatively minor to me, and a great benefit to my neighbor,  then it's something I should do. When it gets a lot closer, maybe I'm not quite  sure what to do here. If it's the reverse, I would have to suffer greatly in order to 

give my neighbor something very insignificant. I don't have any obligation to do  that at all. love my neighbor as myself. So it's so powerful.  

Henry - They're really saying like, there's a certain difference between self  interested in selfish. Yes, that's right. To be self interested means your image  bearer of God, you have rights, you have responsibilities, you live your life that  ultimately is to provide love for my neighbor, as I love myself.  

Dr. Clouser - Now, one of the confusion. I should mention this before we leave.  In the United States, there's a confusion of terminology that causes no end of  messiness. And that is that when when we are discussing the law, right, not  ethics but the law, justice. It's a common terminology in the law, to talk about  things that are unjust, but no one's made a law against them as morally wrong.  We should say, is there there juridically or with respect to justice, they're unjust,  and there ought to be a law, but they call it morality. And that confuses the  juridical sense of, of this with the moral sense, the strictly moral sense, we take  to be from the second commandment, right? But first, the two great  commandments to love God unlimitedly that's all our heart soul, mind, and  strength. Our whole being is dedicated to God. No, no balance with my neighbor there's a balance. And so it has to do with love and hate. Right? So why is it an  aspect of everything easily, it's easy. It's not just people we can love and hate. I  had a suit I bought 40 years ago, I thought was really smart. I love that suit. Or  somebody says, you know, I bought one of those cars, piece of junk from the  day I got it gave me nothing but trouble. So it has to do with things as objects of  love and hate with our obligation to others.  

Henry - The act of it can be for a Christian bitterness sets in when hate goes  deeper, and the lack of forgiveness, I mean, it even becomes into the religious,  religious sphere of our lives or critical. So one more the last one, the fiduciary  and the pistic. Okay. By the way, I'm gonna tell you what you wrote. What's your  little this is what you wrote faith, vision, belief, trustworthy -ok. The term  fiduciary is used to refer to the varying levels of reliability or trustworthiness a  thing or person may have. This aspect is especially important in connection with  human social relations with human social relations of all sorts, which  disintegrates rapidly, where there is significant lack of trust. 

Dr. Clouser - Right. So this is an aspect of everything, too. Things are  trustworthy in many different respects. We usually single one, one main one out  at a time, but sometimes not sometimes we want something to be trustworthy in  this way, this way and this way, and so on, but we make judgments about that.  Now this has a special relation to theology because what it is that people trust  most, that is the thing they think, is the most trustworthy, it cannot fail, it always 

turns out to be what they regard as divine, right, that's the self existent reality  that generates everything else. So what they put the most trust in is has a  correspondence to theology where we try to explain the Divinity belief of a  person and it's run, right.  

Henry - So there's almost a science aspect to this, and we study the science of  the knowledge of God. Here in this area, I mean, you know, in a sense a lot. We  talked about science and the earlier ones and  

Dr. Clouser - be more careful to say, it's an investigation. You want to use  science. It's a dangerous thing.  

Henry - Hey. Well, I just like you, I'm just trying to make sense out of this. 

Dr. Clouser - Call theology, the science of God. Okay. The the Orthodox  Calvinist traditions, find that outrageous, okay, so outrageously make it an object of investigation is what the Object Object of investigation is his word, right. And  we do try to take that apart, and, to the best of our ability, understand exactly  what it's saying there, what teaching we can get from trying. But the fiduciary at  large is an aspect of all things. So my, my car would make a very poor  paperweight. But it's too big. But then, my little medallion, bronze medallion with  a picture of a president on it makes a very nice paperweight. Some things are  good,  

Henry - like when they fit the situation, when they're appropriate, when they're  trustworthy, because that's the appropriate remedy to a problem. That's also part of the fiduciary.  

Dr. Clouser - And some people have suggested that the science of this short of  theology, the short, short of the most, the most trustworthy of all, which is  unconditionally trustworthy, right, in all the other respects would be probability.  What's the probability that this will bring blessings? Stand out for the purpose  I'm trying to use it?  

Henry - Like purpose, even little purpose. Okay, so there you have it. The  aspects of Christian philosophy from Herman Dooyeweerd. And I enjoyed this, I  want to thank you for pleasure. I want to always have this discussion with a real  Christian philosopher 30 or 35 years after I studied this, and I'm amazed at how  much I remembered. You know, and I have my holes you saw, it's good, I have  my issue. That's right. You know, and we have issues I have my issues. But this  is just a wonderful thing that can be in your life, and it will start shaping your  thought in your ministry or if you have a business, all of these things. So again, I

just thank you for the time that you shared, and we'll see what God's gonna do  with this kind of insight.