In this segment, we're going to talk about Kuyper's theory that he called, or it's  been translated from Dutch as sphere sovereignty. Kuyper sees this whole  business of the authorities that exists in human life, as placed there by God, and that the New Testament by mentioning them and regarding them as legitimate,  such as parents in the family, owners in the business, the rulers in the state, the  officials in the church or synagogue, that provides a hint, a basis for how to go at this business, of seeing the proper relation of the state to the rest of society. And he's keenly aware of the, the fallacies and the foibles of the what has preceded  this. He certainly is not a collectivist, and he sees dangers of individualism. And  he's not going to just divide authority up between the church and the state, and  hope that everything works out, this still ends up pretty totalitarian. I mean, what  is it that's left, that isn't being ruled by some authority, even if you think they're  so different, that if you commit a crime against the state, if you run into a church  and hide, the police can't come get you because that's church authority. That's  pretty silly. Well, Kuyper's idea of sphere sovereignty is very different. It's not a  hierarchy at all. And then what I'm, what this symbolizes is the individual.  Instead of a hierarchical view, we're going to have a very different sort of way of  conceiving of this should this circle should have more segments, but I'm just  going to use a few examples. I'm sure you'll get the idea. Human life has many  different aspects there, that term comes back, right? We, we live and move and  have our being was with all sorts of concerns. Health, having enough money to  live on, being educated or understanding of the world around us, education for  our children. We are concerned about faith, and having the right God and having our children taught the Christian faith. And there are many more, there are parts  of life to have to do with just having fun. Here's a sports club. Here's a Book of  the Month Club, and there are artistic institutions and so on. So thinking about  those aspects, Kuyper says, Look, everybody is aware of these they form part of the life of everybody. It's not the case that art is important or appreciated only by artists, anymore than it's the case that business is only important to  businessmen. It's important to churchmen, state rulers. So these are all different aspects of life. So here, we'll put biotic health. And here we'll put faith. And here  we'll put education and over here, making a living. Over here, we'll put our  concern with justice. And we can pick anything really, this last one, we'll just take a club of some sort, maybe a sports club. There are a lot more right. I said that. I hope you heard that. We can divide this into many more segments. Whatever is  important to human beings, they inevitably institutionalized so when some  people say well, I I'm religious, but I don't believe in institutional religion. It  doesn't cut it. What what we what humans are think is important in life. If it's  important, they'll institutionalize it in some way in order to preserve it.  Sometimes, as we know, the institutions created to preserve a certain interest  get in the way of it needs to be reformed or overhaul Sure, but it sure is a lot  better for that cause for it whether that's art or religion or Education or business, 

to be institutionalized to have an institution that's created to promote it than not.  So what happens is that people do that they they form, they make hospitals, and clinics, they form a sports leagues, maybe football to, to enforce justice and  make laws that prevent injustice, they create a state, they form into a state, they  make a living here, business, maybe labor union, education, school, a church, I  mean, church institution, this includes a temple, a mosque, any any sort of  institution like that. So these are the interests that arise naturally in people. And  these are the artifacts that they form, in order to promote and preserve any any  particular interest that they have. The the different aspects of life. And Kuyper  sees this as a divided authority. Each one of these has its own sort of authority.  So there is the authority of the the experts on health, the doctors, and especially the ones that form the ruling board of the hospital. There's the experts, who are  ordained leaders of the church, the teachers who provide education in a school,  the businesses that provide a way to make a living the state to enforce justice.  People form these communities, these social institutions. Think with me for a  moment about A tribe. A tribe doesn't differentiate all these different kinds of  aspects of life. For a tribe, the chief or the role of the chief plus the ruling elders,  make all decisions about everything. It's not that they don't have a business side of life. They don't think of it as distinct. So some one person may make clothes,  or some group of them in the tribe makes clothes and others other guys, they're  the fishermen. It's divided up, but it's pretty. What do I recall, undifferentiated we have a distinguished different sides of life. And people become expert, just in  those. That's a process that takes place historically, and is associated in  Dooyeweerd's theory with the development of a culture. But surely, in the culture in the world today, there are very few tribal, tribal, I call them to substitute tribal  governments to substitute for what we think of as state, the tribe is the state and the church and the business and the hospital. And it's all of them. But for the rest of the world, they've been distinguished, and people are experts in them. Now,  the question is, how are these institutions to relate to one another, now that we  recognize that the different sides of life are natural to humans, and natural  institutionalize them in order to prefer preserve and promote them? And, and  Kuyper's view is that each kind of authority should be kept and protected in its  own proper sphere. That's what this expression means. There's a sphere in  which a particular kind of authority is sovereign, and should not be interfered  with. Let me give some simple examples of how this might go. On here where I  put Sports Club, let's put something more important than that. Family. The  authorities, the proper authorities in the family, according to Scripture, are the  parents. So the parents have the right under this view, to raise their children the  way they see fit. The parents have the right of educating their children, they  have a duty and the right. So if they don't like the schools, they should have the  right to find another school or educate the children themselves. It's parents that  have that proper authority over what their how their children should be 

educated. When it comes to hospitals, being or a doctor, being treating  someone, it's the experts again, who should have the authority. They say, what's the best course of treatment? When is it is it hopeless, and this person can't be  saved. Those kinds of decisions should be left to the doctors. The state has a  policing function here to make sure that everything's on the up and up. That is  we're not declaring some elderly person hopeless, just to get their money. But  aside from that, they should not interfere with those decisions, they should be  made on the basis of health concerns. Similarly, there's authority in the church  there are the clergy, and the theologians. Depending on how your church is  organized, it would be bishops or elders or whatever. And they have the  responsibility to see that the faith is taught, the sacraments are practiced, the  word of God is preached. The state should not be telling people what church to  go to. It's a different authority, any more than they should tell a family. Now your  kids have to go to bed by eight o'clock. Or this is what you're going to feed him  for breakfast. And there have been examples of states trying to do that. And  examples of businesses trying to do it. So each authority is proper in its own  sphere, and should not be interfered with by another authority. That's Kuyper's  idea. That's what it means for each its kind of authority be sovereign in its own  sphere. The owners of a business decide, taking in expert advice, what product  or service they're going to try to provide, and at what price and what are they  going to pay their employees. It's not for government to come and tell them what to do, what to make, what to supply, what to charge. That's their decision. If  there's an economic disaster, does the government have a role kind of step in  and try to help so that millions of people aren't left homeless, and jobless. Of  course, the state has emergency services that it should engage in to help any of these, but it does not take over that kind of authority doesn't take the authority  away from the people that are owners or teachers or clergy, or parents. I  remember reading a story, the man wrote about his own life, his parents had  been Greek immigrants to the United States. And they were really concerned  about being able to settle and get a job. His parents worked very hard to learn  English, and they learned enough to be able to manage. But they still felt  strange, and so on. And they were just delighted out of their minds. When the  father got a job at a big auto making company in Detroit. Not long after the  father got the job and started to work. Representatives of that company came to  the house. And they walked through and they told the man and his wife, that the  the new employee, and his wife, this isn't the way in American house is  supposed to look you have furniture here, you must have brought from the old  country, get rid of this stuff and buy American Furniture and what's that I smell  from the kitchen? That's not American food. We don't want you eating all that  garlic and dark garlicky stuff, you get American diets, and eat that and get those  awful looking drapes down from the windows and put up something that looks  American. And, of course, the attitude then was, well, the owners that business 

want to make these conditions for working here. It's their business. Why can't  they come into your home and tell you how to live what to eat? And they also  had to do they made some comments about where the kids should go to school. And these people should we go into church somewhere else. That is a wild  violation of this division of human society of sphere sovereignty. And in Kuyper's  view, it is the duty of the state to enforce this and to protect it and see to it that  no authority interferes with any other try not to laugh because it's a state that's  most often been guilty of that, but that would be the responsibility of the state.  Under sphere sovereignty. So sphere sovereignty view of society is no, the  employer can't tell you what kind of drapes to hang in the windows and what  you're going to eat. The employer has every right to tell you which job you're  going to do for him and what the hours and the pay are and and so on, but not  interfere with your life, the rest of your life. Here's another example. Back around the turn of the previous century, there was a lot of immigration into the East  Coast of the United States, people flocked, flocked in not only from Greece,  from places like Italy, and Spain, and so on. And a lot of these people found  themselves in very poor straits, they came from being farmers to a big city  environment where now they had to find a job that was fairly strange to them.  And in many cases, incidents such as the one I'm about to describe took place.  Husband comes and gets a laboring job, maybe he's working on a road gang or  building a bridge, he's doing hard labor, and he gets injured. And now he can't  go to work. So his wife now has to go find work. And she goes to the garment  district of the city and says, I can sew I know how I can do good work for you.  And they say, okay, but you got to bring your kids, you want this job, you bring  your three children, and they're going to work too, and they're not getting paid  you are, and you're going to work six days a week. Or they may say you're  going to work seven days a week. Now, from the sphere, sovereignty point of  view, the business side of life, has no right to tell these people that their children  can't go to school, and that they can't, as a family worship together, which is just what they're doing. In the United States, there were passed child labor laws so  that this sort of thing wouldn't happen. A lot of the people that voted for the child  labor laws, if we, if we take at face value, what they said, voted for them  because they thought children should have a delightful childhood, they shouldn't have to work and so on. We agree with child labor laws not for that reason. We  agree with them. Because we have this idea of sphere sovereignty. The  business may not encroach on family like that, it may not take away the  opportunity for education to the children, you may not take up interfere in the  religious side of life by demanding that you work so, so many days, every day,  every week, and can't worship. I'm hoping that this is giving you some feel for  the way this works out when it's applied. We have some pretty egregious  violations of sphere sovereignty, done in just recent years by many  governments, I think the government of my own country violates it pretty badly, 

often, but here's the idea of society that's going to underline the theory  underpinning the theory of the state that's coming up. We see society as divided among many authorities, each is legitimate. Each authority is God given that's  the way God has built authority into human life, the supreme authority overall is  only God. There is no institution in human society, that is the supreme authority.  Not the church, not the state. It's only God, from whom all authority comes.  Scripture tells us and that means the authorities of the church, in the family, in  the state, in business, education, whatever. This is a very different view of  society. It's not hierarchical at all. It's not bottom to top. It's every individual  functions in all of these aspects to some degree. And then this is the way the  institutions formed to preserve those different signs of life, are to be seen  relating in relation to one another. We'll pick up more of this next time, and then  we'll begin to lay the groundwork for the Christian theory of the state the political institution



Modifié le: lundi 10 juillet 2023, 08:22