Henry Reyenga - Hi everyone, President Henry Reyenga, here with Dr. Roy  Clouser. And we are launching a philosophy program Christian philosophy  program. And one of the things I was curious about was Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd ? Because I was a philosophy major I studied Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd . I'm kind of a nostalgic type person I can imagine in my mind, what was he like, and who do I know that met Dr. Dooyeweerd . And then I found out  that, Roy, you definitely met him. But tell us your story of how you came to meet  him? how that worked out. And I have a few questions as you okay. So  

Dr. Clouser - when I was a senior in seminary, in Philadelphia, Dooyeweerd  came to Philadelphia and gave five lectures. And I went to hear them. And I  became very fascinated with the idea that philosophy could be a Christian  philosophy, almost no one has ever thought that was even possible. Right, let  alone tried it. They think that Christians can do philosophy, all right, and they  have things at stake. They want the philosophy to come out. So will harmonize  with belief in God. Right, but they take the two is already given. This is what  philosophy is, here's belief in God, how do we how do we harmonize the two in  the interface? No, he says that we start with God. And we construct a theory of  reality, guided by belief in God. And so I was really interested in that. When I  finished up my work, undergraduate philosophy degree, and then the BD is  seminary. I wanted to go to graduate school. And after a number of failures of  the vicissitudes of life,  

Henry Reyenga - I love the word vicissitude. I just want to be on the record.  

Dr. Clouser - So I, I entered graduate school. And then when I was far enough  along to choose a dissertation topic, I proposed writing on Dooyeweerd. And the faculty member there, there was my advisor said, Okay, we're going to prove  this on two conditions. One is that you go there and work on it with him. And he  dug up got me a Harrison fellowship and sent me over. The second is that he  writes me a letter and says, you got him right? Because nobody here is gonna  read all that stuff and examine you and whether you've got him right. He says,  You got it right. We're gonna examine you and whether you think he is right.  Which makes sense, right, fair enough. So So I spent an entire summer in  Amsterdam, seeing Dooyeweerd call it Okay, so who says  

Henry Reyenga - yes? Come in American come in. I mean, this is they did this  all like, on the table for you know, when  

Dr. Clouser - I arrived, the university, had very kindly set up appointments with  me, the Secretary's philosophy department went all over this stuff, he says, then this day, you're gonna see Vollenhoven and here you're gonna see van Riessen.

You have a conference with Vander Hoeven, this person that prevent them next  Tuesday night, you have an appointment to see Dooyeweerd. Okay. And I said,  like Tuesday morning appointment, I drive scheduled here. All right, I just  borrowed against by salary, and plus has a fellowship. And in order to get there,  I'm there for the entire summer. And looks like the next 13 weeks is gonna be a  long summer. If I'm not seeing him, I  

Henry Reyenga - just kind of take some rides on the dykes.  

Dr. Clouser - Yeah, right. This fellow says, Well, look, he's retired. I mean, he  doesn't even work here anymore. It's up to him if he wants to see you again.  Right? So no, on the way, I'm running on the tram toward Dooyeweerd's house  saying, What am I gonna say? It's gonna get him to invite me back. I don't I was  clueless when I walked to the door. So his housekeeper showed me in and I  went up to study and he said, How can I help you? And I decided to tell him  what had happened over the past week. This past week, I've seen five or six  people here at the university, and every one of them has told me that I'm not  understanding you correctly. So why don't I tell you what I think's going on in his  major work for the sake of theoretical thought? Four volumes. I'll tell you what I  think is going to stop me where did I go wrong? Go ahead. Alright, so I start 40- 45 minutes later, he starts laughing. He says, Who told you that's wrong? That's  what I want to hear. Okay, so it's not wrong. So I mentioned the people and he  shook his head. So many misunderstandings. So I then said, Well, if that is right, I have a problem. And I took a piece of paper and I put down in logical symbols.  The main thing claims that our premises philosophy and the main conclusions  that he wants to draw, and I can construct a proof that it was an invalid  argument and slid it across the desk to him. Okay. So he said nobody ever  made that criticism before. And it was pretty obvious what needed to be done to  fix that. I mean, what tricky or anything, but we, we discussed how to meet that  need for another 20 minutes or so. And he said, Well, it's getting late, when can  you come back? So then the answer is everything. I didn't say every Tuesday. I  said, I come back next week. So every Tuesday night, throughout the summer, I  got to go and talk with him for two to three hours. Now, there's another piece of  that that worked out real well, Johan Vander Hoeven was much younger than  maybe maybe seven or eight years older than I. Maybe 10. But Johan was a  very sharp, very subtle thinker. Who knew Britain, British and American  philosophy, I'd say even better than Dooyeweerd. And he was a professor of  modern philosophy. Your viewers need to know that in philosophy, modern  means 1600 to 1800. Okay, not what's going on now. Okay, so he specialized on that period. And I would see him on Wednesday morning. So, Tuesday night I'm  at Dooyeweerd's house. Wednesday morning, I go see Johan, and he. And I  said last night, I said this to Dooyeweerd, how can this be? And then here's his 

reply, not post that a reply. And I get something like, oh, yeah, I see why it  wouldn't be three. Well think of it this way. And he turns the thing around a little  bit. And it's another way, it was hugely helpful that every night after seeing  Doooyeweerd. I saw Johan, on the next morning, so that was just enormously  helpful. And then when I finished writing the dissertation that I proposed to  Dooyeweerd that I come back and go over it with him. And he says, That was a  good idea, because communicating by letter doesn't cut it when you're trying to  discuss this stuff. Right? So the university gave me bought my airline ticket. And  the Vander Hoeven's put me up for a month, isn't that something that I saw  Dooyeweerd twice a week, and for for about five weeks, four or five weeks, and  then came back and made all the revisions and submitted the dissertation for  defense, which is not in this country. That's not just a social event, right? In  Europe. If you've come up for the defense, you're going to pass you're going to  get the degree in the US have you come up for defense, you can fail. Yes. And  people have been failed.  

Henry Reyenga - So a couple of things. First of all, just notice, Dr. Clouswer's  desire to get a mentor to ask questions to aspire to be around people that he  respected that he wanted to learn from. So if you look back at that time, here's a question I personally have when I studied Dr. Dooyeweerd, who would ought by  the time I studied in the 1980s, 1981, 82, 83 finished my philosophy program,  mentor in college, Dr. Dooyeweerd had already been dead because he died in  1977, 77.  

Dr. Clouser - So the first summer I saw him was 67. Okay, and then the second  when I went back to go over it was was August to September of 71.  

Henry Reyenga - Okay, so 2018 right now, so he has been deceased for 41  years. Okay, so, so many times, it just seems like your whole life.  

Dr. Clouser - Life goes by.  

Henry Reyenga - And you wrote them In 68 you said.  

Dr. Clouser - The summer, the first summer that I spent the whole summer there was 67, 67. Okay.  

Henry Reyenga - And that's 51 years ago. Back again, so Okay, so tell me about his house a little bit. What I just curious. He lives.  

Dr. Clouser - He lives on aurania North salon, which is near the sambal Park,  and he was number 13. It's a whole row of what we might call here, a 

brownstone is there all the row houses three stories high. And his study was up  on the third floor. He told me that during the war, everybody went up to their  attics and knocked the attic partitions out and has a BBC of radio house he lived in the war. He lives there. I don't know when he moved there, but in there almost all his life.  

Henry Reyenga - So in the war, was he a professor at the time?  

Dr. Clouser - He was not a philosophy professor. I don't know if you know that  he was a professor and the professor in the law school. He taught law and it  was reflections on the foundations of the law that led him to construct the whole  ontology as a Christian theory of reality, so in large better measure, one of the  reviewers called him and auto detect someone who taught himself because that  was not his main field of study. I think he majored in philosophy as an  undergraduate. But then he wrote in the philosophy of law, so he only taught law courses in the law school. While he was a philosopher, he wrote all this  philosophy. He was a law professor. He told me that one night after the Nazis  had taken over the government in the Netherlands, that he was lecturing at the  university and someone asked him, someone in the class asked him what he  thought of the recent Nazi edict. They had been saying he will do this and this.  And he an allusion to Nero. Who had his mother murdered. You remember that? He said, “Nero's lawyers once said, it's easier to commit a murder than in the  defense of money for money.” That's what he quoted. He said, he saw a couple  of people duck out right away. He figured they were Gestapo agents, and that  they reported them. And sure enough, the next night, as he said at dinner, there  was a knock at the door. And that was a member of the Dutch underground and  said, Don't pack don't do anything. Walk right out of the house and follow me  Gestapo are on the way.  

Henry Reyenga - Wow. So okay, so now, this is I don't know about this story. So  anyway, he leaves.  

Dr. Clouser - Yes, they hid him out for a long time. And he told me he got so  lonely for his family that he sneaked back into Amsterdam and knocked on his  own door. And when the housekeeper opened the door, she yelled, run, they  were just here and he never got to see anyone. Again, take off and hide and  hiding. I don't know how long he was actually in hiding. But he was in hiding in  World War II. Yes. Nazis were going after, yes, he was on the list to be arrested,  shipped to some  

Henry Reyenga - camp or whatever. Like people in that time, who were not for  the Nazis risked their lives, 

Dr. Clouser - A lot of people risked their lives, saving other people to  

Henry Reyenga - I know, my, my mother's family, hid Jews and actually other  Dutch countrymen in the farms in Friesland. And in fact, today, she's now 88.  And she still has post traumatic stress syndrome, sort of symptoms about, you  know, people knocking on your door, you know,  

Dr. Clouser - it was a very difficult time. In reality as an undergraduate, I also  had a professor who was German and he was in Germany during the war, and  one night Gestapo Agents knocked on his door. Professor, have you seen any of the runaway Jews? So he said No, when he had 20 Some in his basement, he  was hoping to get over. Okay, so,  

Henry Reyenga - okay, so after the war, he gets reunited. And now was he really married then? He probably had a family. He was married, when the Gestapo  

Dr. Clouser - When the Dutch underground came to warn the Gestapo the first  time he had 12 Children 12. Children  

Henry Reyenga - Our Dr. Feddes has eight. That's even four more than Dr.  Feddes.  

Dr. Clouser – But eight less than Bach.  

Henry Reyenga - right. So he had 12 children. And then after the war, he gets  reunited. Starts up his teaching.  

Dr. Clouser - Sure. Sure. The university I don't think the university ever  completely closed down. What happened was that rather than obey the German edict, they officially shut it down, and the professors met all the students in their  houses so that things could go on anyway. And that was hard for the Nazis to do anything about it's their own home, you really, really go in there and haul them  out for teaching people. Well, maybe that's not where we need to exert our  energy. Right?  

Henry Reyenga - Well, the war was a very challenging time for a lot of people.  And by God's grace, many people lived I mean, Amsterdam is where Anne  Frank is there. So it's its center of great heroism of the Dutch resistance and  Jews who sought to survive in very difficult circumstances. The Dutch who tell  them that in there is a kind of a testimony of the love of God in various people.

Dr. Clouser - It happened all over not just Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, there's a  famous incident. The Nazis have been taking over one of the biggest ports, right in the world now have a way to get their goods around. And so the  Longshoremen wouldn't, wouldn't unload a Nazi ship. And they all no we're not  doing it. So the commandant comes down. He orders this guy out and they hang him right in front of them. Oh, no, are you gonna unload the ship they said that  now we will never unload the ship. The Germans had to take a division off the  field to operate the port. And there is there's a statute to this guy, there's a big  burly looking in Rotterdam harbor in memory of the men that defied the Nazis. 

Henry Reyenga - so go back to Dooyeweerd where we kind of got off the track.  Everybody knows I didn't get the off the track sometimes. So after the war, he  gets into the teaching profession. And he was already a professor. Right? He  was getting back into and all that. And he retired from the Free University in.  

Dr. Clouser - Somewhere around 65, I'm not sure. I'm not sure.  

Henry Reyenga - And then you saw him, of course, in 68, where some of the 70, or some of the distinctive 67 were some of the distinctive personal  characteristics of him that if you were to meet him, you notice like,  

Dr. Clouser - I found him to be very gracious, very kind about the use of his time  to take the time with me. He not only did that he invited me to dinner. Both times like for the first summer. And then when I came back, four months ago,  

Henry Reyenga - he prayed before he prayed, yes. Did you ever read the Bible  too.  

Dr. Clouser – in Dutch But I thought, at that moment, that it was very significant,  that I would be privileged to hear him pray  

Henry Reyenga - the same prayer,  

Dr. Clouser - it became he began both times while Father in heaven. In the  handle,  

Henry Reyenga - in the handle, the father and the handle, you know what I  remember my grandfather. He was a good Dutchman. They gave me a kid to  Father and to handle. Remember that? 

Dr. Clouser - I found them to be kindly. Of course, it's it's intimidating to sit and  talk to somebody who's read almost everything anybody ever wrote. It's  overwhelming. So  

Henry Reyenga – his mind was incredibly.  

Dr. Clouser - And he could he held all these conversations with me in English,  but he could have done just as well in French or German.  

Henry Reyenga - Really? So. So you're talking to them in English? Yes.  

Dr. Clouser - I don't speak Dutch, French and German. I know one language Oh, and I have the American's disease. I can ask for the men's room and directions  in five languages. That's it. I can't hold a conversation.  

Henry Reyenga - well, what about like, he ever gets frustrated with you? Like,  you know, here's this young buck come there taking this time and.  

Dr. Clouser - And one night, we shared, hee asked if I would mind if we shared  our our session. And another young fellow who was working at the Free  University came and joined us. It was a three way conversation. And that night,  he said, what? Why don't we just turn the lights out and do this in the dark? The  whole conversation. So that was nice. It was a it was a nice evening. It was  quiet. It was cool. It was very pleasant thing to do.  

Henry Reyenga - Interesting. Wow. He actually the whole conversation was in  the dark. Yeah. Why do you do that?  

Dr. Clouser - I think it was just easier, it had been a bright sunny day. And maybe he just thought it would be more peaceful to have the discussion in the dark.  

Henry Reyenga - Was there anything that you look back at? Was he still was his wife still with him? Or was he alone at this time? No. His wife had died some  years before some years. So he was at that point alone, of course, he had a  housekeeper.  

Dr. Clouser - And I think some of his children were still in the Netherlands. So  they may have seen him from time to time. By and large there. They were pretty  spread out the children when  

Henry Reyenga - they got married, and met people in some went to America or  Canada. I mean, those were places where 

Dr. Clouser - a lot of time one of them Herman Dooyeweerd Jr. had moved to  England and then to Canada. And very, very wonderful guy just we got along  and at lunch one time. Somebody asked him you were born in the Netherlands.  So you grew up there and then you lived in England for quite a while now you're  in Canada, what's the best place to live? He said, well, in the Netherlands as  soon as you meet anybody and they want to know what you think about  everything and they argue with you. Okay, okay. In England. Nobody ever asks  anybody else what they say. It's considered unspeakable, you don't right, you  wouldn't do that. That's kind of another extreme. They said, I think Canada is  just a nice compromise. Right?  

Henry Reyenga - So that's where he his son, Herman Dooyeweerd, Jr. Moved  to,  

Dr. Clouser - and he was vice president of the Bank of  

Henry Reyenga - Montreal. Okay. Launched very successful. Your son, is he still living today? We don't know.  

Dr. Clouser - As far as I know, Herman is still alive. But he suffered a stroke  some years ago and has been incapacitated, ever since.  

Henry Reyenga - So now when you were in during that time there, and you  knew that it's like those moments in life, that you actually got to be with one of  the foremost Christian philosophers. What were some of your reflections on  that? What? Why do you think you were picked? 

Dr. Clouser – I thought it was a big deal then. This is a, this is a terrific  opportunity. And I regarded it as an answer to prayer as a way to get that  Christian philosophy see what what he meant by that, and how he developed it.  Absolutely brilliant. And so I thought that I had been given a treasure. And now I  had to do something with it. So that's why I wrote the books I did.  

Henry Reyenga - Well, and I feel like you're you're being responsible. I feel this  way. How does an 80 year old from New Jersey, come up to Michigan, and he  does not only come out here for a few days, gives a couple of presentations.  This is the last day that Dr. Roy Clouser has been taping. We're all done with  two college level classes. So much discussion, so much speaking. And I can  say, and I want to compliment you that you felt there was a treasure then. And  even here 51 years later, you're sharing that treasure, I still think it's a treasure.  So I will again use the same you've been responsible and we thank you for 

being connected to Christian leaders Institute and like to share these classes  and what you've learned and more. And again, you've had your own your self  esteem professor. So you honor a professor and you yourself have been given  many awards have been given many awards over the years. So we feel it's a  treasure and I believe that those who take these classes, get to know you get to  know Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd that that treasure is continuing to give be given  in now to be given all over the world. So I want to continue sharing a little bit  more about Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd and some of your own experiences.