Video Transcript: Discussion with Dr. Roy Clouser and Bob Zomermaand

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Welcome back, as you may have noticed, for a  couple of sessions now, Professor Clouser, has been looking off to his right. And there sits this other person, which happens to be me. My name is Bob  Zomermaand, and I'm on the faculty here at CLI. And one of the things I like to  do with this particular course is, is to sit in and have some discussion as it's  going along. You'll also find that in the other course that we recorded with  Professor Clouser. So my name is Bob. And as we talk back and forth, what  we're trying to do is, grasp grapple with some of the things that might be kind of  an issue for a student to try to grasp and understand. So here we go. Now,  Professor Clouser, if I could use your, your drawing things here. It seems to me  that one of the things I have I have noticed, to a great extent in in my studies,  with philosophy and so on, is that the whole idea that the Divine is found  somewhere inside of reality. Yeah. Seems like that's just accepted.  

Dr. Roy Clouser - Oh, yeah, sure.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Why do why do we just do that? Well, I  

Dr. Roy Clouser - don't think it's, it's just accepted among Christians. No, but I  mean, this is where people work. That's right. But that's because of the Start  philosophy got, I mean, there was 600 years of burden thinking, and theory  making great cultural accomplishments. The Greeks not only proposed these  theories, they use the link, they calculated the distance from the Earth to the  Sun, they came up with the earth went around the Sun centuries before it was  rediscovered by Copernicus, and Galileo. They developed mathematics, they  developed logic, this is really impressive stuff. So Christianity arises, Christian  scholar looks at all that and says, What am I going to say? It's all wrong. No it  isn't all wrong. So how do I explain that they came up with so much truth and so  on. And they are taken in by this skin I had here. Well, okay. They're wrong in  locating the divine as part of the cosmos, it's, it's not matter. And it's not logic.  And it's not mathematics isn't space. But but then those things may really  explain everything else, and still not be divine, you come to this scheme that I  had here. And so they, they're pretty many people go to the wall for this, they  love this. They want to keep this, they want to say, if you, if you junk that you're  going to start all over. And in a way, that's what Dooyeweerd was saying, You  need to start all over. It doesn't mean nothing ever happened. We learned a lot  from the past theories. There's progress, even if it's negative, you find that you  find out what will work pretty well, as you go along.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - So we have we have God who's who's outside of  reality, outside of creation, outside of the Creator, He is real. But he's the one  that that forms the creation. And and it's Christ, who is really the mediator of the 

Dr. Roy Clouser - power of God, it's Christ, the sustains everything, through  whom God created everything, at every moment is all depends on God through  Christ. It would if God were to withdraw a sustaining power, everything other  than God would disappear, like the stuff on your computer screen when you shut it off. Like you and I would just be gone. Yes, everything would be. So right now.  Christ is active in our lives. Oh, yeah, sure. And everyone's whether they know it or not.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Depends on Christ. Sure, it all does. Sure.  

Dr. Roy Clouser - But the end of this was very tempting. You can say, you know,  you can, as long as your theory doesn't contradict some revealed truth, you're  fine. Well, how, how is somebody going to show that a theory contradicts  revealed truths? Usually, it's really easy to just change a little here and there.  You don't have a contradiction anymore. We're saying no, there's a much more  profound connection between God and theory, making than just altering your  language so that we don't have an out and out contradiction. That belief in God  can actually motivate us or direct us, in theory making so that we tend to go  down the right path. It won't guarantee we'd ever make a mistake. I'm not saying that. It's not that if you do it the right way, you'll inevitably have the right answer.  you can you can make a hypothesis and delimited in a way that Christians ought to, and it's still be false.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Okay, so I want to just Take a hypothesis and  theory. What's the difference?  

Dr. Roy Clouser - Probably nothing. Okay. Usually, most people are in the habit  of using theory to include the observations and other things that lead us to make the hypothesis which we add. And then we draw a conclusion. Some people use them interchangeably.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - That's what I kind of thought. But if we have to  keep them straight, now's the time to get them straight?  

Dr. Roy Clouser - As I use them, a hypothesis is a component of a theory. A  theory is a wider set of hypotheses are the guesses, we make and insert and  see that it entails what results we know to be the truth or results we  experimentally test for if it's an experimental science, a lot of them aren't Yeah, I  mean, sure, the math and physics, in biology, we can do that kind of stuff. It's  harder when it comes to psych. Yeah, and by the time we get to ethics, you're  not talking about experiments. 

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - We hope we do hope. One of the things, you  know, the Greeks were were so powerful in terms of the power of their thinking,  that's amazing. Then it held over. I mean, this is, like 2600 years.  

Dr. Roy Clouser - Individual geniuses like Archimedes still boggle your mind.  Toward the end, there are some writings that look as though he invented the  calculus it was kind of lost, but the guys are amazing.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - So when they were talking, they lived in a culture  that had all these gods. Yes. How did the philosopher's relate to that? Could I  have you just tell me a little bit about what you understand?  

Dr. Roy Clouser - There's, there's no one characterization. They related a lot of  different ways. Especially in the early going, Anaximander who recognizes that  whatever you regard as the self existent generator of everything else, is divine.  And he didn't believe in any gods. So he gets called atheist. But he's explaining  

the nature of religious belief in such a way that one divinity, belief or another is  going to lie at the foundation of any ontology or epistemology somebody  construct. So he did have that. I did say, there's a new manuscript, I'm working  on a book. And I was discussing this. And I pointed out how different guys held  different views. But it seemed to come down the longer philosophy went along to the Greeks, the more and more they were atheists, they became extremely  skeptical of the gods and goddesses. Until you, you get a famous essay it's  called On the gods I remember translated into Greek. And it starts it's  Protagoras concerning the gods, it is impossible to say whether they are or are  not. That's the famous opening line. And in the book, I contrast that with the  verdict in Israel, The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. For Israel, that  wasn't a hypothesis. God lived with them. That was a part of the national  consciousness. Very different were you reason them think and explain under  faith and God? Or you are left to look on your own for what how things might be  in the US look at those gods and stories about the gods and goddesses that are  given by Hesiod and Homer in the later philosophers say, Well, you know, that's  kind of fun for kids, but we don't think any of that's real. So the  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - the, I've been to Greece, and you know, they  have these temples to Apollo, and Athena, and so on. How did the philosophers  relate to that? 

Dr. Roy Clouser - In a way that's very similar to the way Brahmin Hindu priests  would relate to all the different traditions and gods and goddesses and practices  in India. They don't oppose them. They don't say to somebody who looks 

stopped this, this isn't the truth. The Buddhast will do that. What they say is that  the closest to the truth they can come. That's all the religious insight they had.  Not everybody can be a brother. But the real truth is that's just there to  accommodate the average person who can't and isn't prepared to come to the  real truth, which is that all that's illusion, it's all preliminary and the real Truth is  that Brahman Atman is not an individual, not a person. It's by meditation and  also by knowledge that we, we will be absorbed into that not reborn into another  life of suffering. That's, that's what they believe so that the philosopher's took an  attitude that was much like that. They usually didn't go up and down saying the  gods are all false, would have brought them in. And that's what got Socrates in  trouble when they, when when he ignored these people sufficiently that they  decided to get rid of them. They found a way to charge him with being an  atheist, which he wasn't, but or he never said he was, they said, Well, this and  this, and this shows that you really are whether you admit it or not, you know  that according to the practices then, and they didn't expect to have to execute it.  It was standard practice to be sentenced to death, and your family comes and  pays a bribe and you go home, and he wouldn't pay the bribe. His friends come  and say, What are you doing, but you know what they're gonna, if you don't pay  the bribe, you know what they're gonna do? What he says that's the honorable  thing. Of course, it's also true that if you had served in the Army, and he had,  and you were killed, even if the state executed you, your children were cared for, for life. And they were given a free education. So Oh, could have had, and he  was pretty old. So he said, maybe it's better I just accept the sentence. That little aside. But these guys still impress everybody with brilliance. And, and yet, they  also have blind spots, as it has to do with the different divinity beliefs that  motivated one thinker or another. And so sorry, the Christians coming along,  didn't see the downfall in that move. In, in the Western Church, they go right  ahead. They accept that move. And the Eastern Church did not, I think they  were right, to reject that. And as I mentioned before, and in the other course,  how Calvin, especially Luther and Calvin, at the time of the Reformation,  rediscovered the orthodox view, whether they did that by reading orthodox  thinkers or not, I can't. I've been trying to find out, I haven't been able to find out, but at any rate they really did see, Calvin says, look, the grace of Christ. He's  saying, in effect, it's not just upstairs in that house. It's not just supernatural. The grace of Christ permeates all reality. And all our understanding is nothing unless  it's brought in captivity to Christ. He quotes that from St. Paul. He was clear  about not buying into that move.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Just one more new question here. As you were  talking, it reminded me in in Acts 17, when Paul shows up in Athens, where were all the people are gathered together to hear what was new. It sounds like a  typical university. 

Dr. Roy Clouser – It was the Public debating spot. Yeah, Luke says these guys  spend all their time, just to hear or tell something new. Down to Earth  observation,  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - yeah. And then Paul stands on the Areopagus  and says, something about the gods Do not dwell in temples made by human  handss.  

Dr. Roy Clouser - He has a clever start, he starts by saying, on my way, here  today, I noticed an altar dedicated to the unknown God. That was Greek way of  covering your bases. In case we missed, somebody will have one that's okay.  And he says, I come tell you about that God. And that's the one that created the  heavens and the earth and everything in that you can have any God like that.  See? Right away. There put off the heavens, the earth, he created everything.  Come on. A God can't do that. A God's just to being with more divinity and  another human. No, no, this is the this is the only God the God that created the  heavens and the earth and everything in it. And when he gets done, what they  say in Greek is, who's the seed picker?  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Talking about resurrection.  

Dr. Roy Clouser – Who's the hayseed that doesn't even know that the gods can't control this. Yeah. But but he was the the true God who kept who does and  raised Christ from the dead. And that's what he said. That's why they call him  the seed picker.  

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Yeah. And so, so Paul was kind of calling into  question this thing when he was saying there, the Areopagus Is that Yeah, sure.  I think it was saying, you know, your gods are the God I declared to you, actually has made everything. Yeah. And so when you're talking about these gods and  so on, if they might even be real, which they're not, but they still be creatures of  this God, I'm declaring to you.  

Dr. Roy Clouser - That's right. So If you put what he says there together with  Colossians 1, it really looks like he's saying no to this. So it's not only I'll repeat  this, again, it's not only that no part of the cosmos itself exists, and is what  everything else depends on. No part of the cosmos is what everything else  depends on whether it's self existent or not. It's not the God created foreign  matter and that foreign matter generate everything else. But it all directly  depends on God. And the only mediator is Jesus Christ in His divine nature. 

Reverand Bob Zomermaand - Yeah. All right. Thank you so much.  Dr. Roy Clouser - My pleasure.